Rats in the wall.

After a weird and dynamic week I finally finished the mural at the new building of Solaes. I had to print some t-shirts first at Goed voor Goed. So yes, screenprinted shirts is a thing I do as well but let me be clear. I don't take every printing job. It was my day job at one point but I left that in the past. I just want to do cool shirt designs and print some cool things for local businesses who I like and support. Things like "De Buutenplaets" and "Brouwerij Solaes". Anyhow... that had to be done first. After that the fun stuff started. The letters on the wall.

The projection on the wall

We projected te letters on the wall so I could trace the outlines. This was possible since it was inside. So for the first time painting letters this big on a wall this seemed to be the best option. I trusted on my skills as a painter to pull some straight lines and my knowledge of letters to know how they work. With the right material and the knowledge and a "just start and whatever happens happens" mentality I started the mural. The goal of this sign was to make it look like it was put there in the 1920-30s and is well preserved and restored. The old feeling but a bit more modern.

When the black letters were placed on the wall we were happy with the result. BUT! Jan-Willem, the client and master of the art of beer creation thought it would be rad to place a white line to give it more of a 3d effect. It would make it look a bit more classy so we talked about it for a while to make sure it would be the right thing to do because the people who will visit the brewery would see this and get the idea that it would be more of a higher class place to drink a beer. The story would change. The letters like this would look like it was there when it was just a small brewery who needed a sign. These letters were a bit cheaper to put there and it would do the job. The 3d effect would make it pop more. After some talking we came to a different conclusion. Jan-Willem liked the craft itself and thought it deserved the class and respect. The most important reason came with that: He fucking liked it. That is reason enough to place the white lines to give it more of a 3d effect.

And there we go the final result. Indeed it looked damn awesome. This is the proof of a good idea and your ideas being tasteful always give great results. The letters look great and still look like they are there for decades. I tortured the surface with some sandpaper and the white with some leftover blue paint to give it a bit more of a old look and it blended perfectly. Now it looks like it belongs there and it has been there forever.

If you guys like it I could give you an update in the future when the brewery is fully active and you can see what a sign like this does with the ambiance of the space. Just leave it in the comments! Thank you again for reading this and enjoying the work I do. Vince Trommel/CAVUM

A big painting job.

After some bumps in the road I am finally ready to give a wall some colour. Wednesday I started with a experienced guy to fix the color the way we wanted it to be. Less blue, a bit lighter and just a touch of black added to make it a bit more grey. I have a huge respect for the people who have all this knowledge of pigments and paint. People who know how things should be done to hold for a long time. Especially in these days of "do it quick and cheap and it doesn't matter if it doesn't last that long". Art is build on a good strong base of knowledge.

So here we started at the mural. Not a big-ass painting of a weird creature but a traditional commercial painting. "Just" the text Brouwerij Solaes in a beautiful font. Lettering is a craft I respect a lot. Mainly because no one ever looks at it. It just is. You will not notice how good lettering is because that is the goal. Being able to read it well and get a certain feeling because of how it looks. Same thing with a book you read. You will never notice how the letters look. When you notice the letters it is never in a good way.

Now I do have to mention that this piece is going to be big so I think people will notice this in the end. As you can see above it is going to be a pretty big sign painted with KEIM paint. A mineral paint that is going to be there forever. Especially since it is inside. This sign will survive all of us. I don't want anything to do with kids so I am crapping my work all over the world for generations way beyond us. Besides that, children become adults and you will never know if you will be responsible for a new Hitler.

Anyhow, what I am doing in the picture above is making sure the height of the painting is okay and the font looks good. It does so I could start. First the background painting because the black letters will cover the blue anyway. Something I had to deal with is that it was not going to look too "new". The walls are old and wear the scars of time with pride. That is what we wanted to achieve in this painting too. One of the reasons we choose for KEIM wall paint was because it is high in pigment, forever and also a bit watery. After a few tests we discovered that it worked perfect on this wall. The white parts were a bit lighter and the damaged darker parts took a lot more pigment so it became a bit darker.

The first layer was the blue. As you can see there are some white spots here and there but that was damage on the wall. Perfect if you ask me since it makes it look a bit older. There are no stripes of the paint roller to be found, just the texture of the wall itself. If I wanted it to be more perfect I would have applied a second layer of blue. That way it would have been perfectly blue. But again, that was not what we had in mind. It had to look like the brewery is around forever already.

Second and last part for today was the black line around the blue. I know it looks a bit crooked here and there but I assure you it is not. The wall is a bit bumpy so when you look at it from the other side it looks crooked the other way around. When the text is on it and it looks a bit weird I can add some paint or sand it a bit so it looks less annoying. I didn't want to hurry with the letters since this is the first time I work on letters this big. So that was the end of my painting day. I worked on some non-painting stuff after this. It was a good day and I made a lot of progress already. Good things take time as the Guinness commercials teach us. I will give you all an update next week on the result! Vince Trommel CAVUMscriptorium

Expect nothing.

I mentioned a big mural at Brouwerij Solaes. But this did not happen yet. There were some problems with the color so next week we'll give it another go. Yes, nothing happens as you expect how things will happen and that is okay.

The unexpected, when you take it in a small dose at the time, is good for your creative mind and it makes you more flexible. Something that is kind of hard for someone who has to deal with Autism. But I have to deal with it anyway because that is life. Things don't go as you want or like anyway. So let's talk about the things I did do. I felt sick and tired, maybe because of the world we live in, maybe just some bacteria or virus. I don't know, but I feel okay at the moment.

Linocut 4th of May.

I made a linocut for the Dutch Memorial Day at the fourth of may. We remember all the people who died in the Second World War. With the war in Ukraine it seems that it is more important to remember what war means then ever. That is why I made this symbolistic image. Death sits calmly before a window. Outside things are flat and destroyed. But in the hand of Death you find a bullet. This piece is a symbol of that you are not safe for war. Not even when you are warm inside your own home.

Second thing I wanted to talk about is the painting I started. A false and greedy Mary walks through the people. Big larvae/maggots crawl between the people. Weapons and wildmen and above all, the well known chaos. I am not going to explain anything. You need to figure out the story. A painting is only able to exist because of your eyes and how your mind processes the things you see.

A philosophical discussion we can have while drinking coffee at a bar (I'm can't drink alcohol anymore so I'll take coffee or tea.)

new logo 2022

The third thing I made is a new logo design! The old logo was too much of a drawing, I like the old design, but it is better for a t-shirt print design. The new design is more for the bigger audience since I am working on newsletters and other graphic design type of stuff. I am not destroying eyes all the time anymore and I like clean design work. I guess you'll see more of this in the near future but I don't promise anything. I am more proud of my illustrations and paintings at the moment to be honest.

Old logo

So that is a bit of what I have been working on besides some news letters and other graphic design stuff. But that is not for this website at this point. On other news, I am moving all social media type of stuff to this website. So leave a comment if you are interested in more updates or maybe a forum type of thing so the TRVE KVLT people can hang around and talk about music, design and art.