3Develop image blog

visualisatie, ontwerp, fotografie, stadstours / visualisation, design, photography, city tours / visualisierung, entwurf, fotografie, stadtführungen

Category: Cartography

A map can evoke a world on a piece of paper, or on a few million pixels. Big or small, real or fiction. A world that once was but no longer is. Or a world that does not exist yet but that could one day bethere.

I always liked browsing through atlases, studying street plans and dreaming away over maps. And I practice the noble craft of cartography myself. From the history of Rotterdam to the future of Mars: I map it.

Styled world map of time zones, in all hues of the colorwheel as well as a relief effect

Cartography / Geen categorie

Mapping the World’s Time Zones

A world map showing only the time zones; just the borders between those zones, without any context. It creates a somewhat confusing image: straight lines that occasionally form right angles and suddenly turn into messy winding lines. But then suddenly you spot it: coastlines and national borders, Iceland, India, Argentina. With some colors added, such a map seemed like a nice addition to my collection of world maps. But before that map was finished, I discovered some fascinating facts about international timekeeping. Full and half hours How many time zones are there on our planet? Twenty-four, you might think, one… Read More

Part of the Impressionist World Map, showing Europe, the Middle East, Northern Africa, the Atlantic Ocean and parts of the Americas

Cartography / Geen categorie

An Impressionistic Worldmap

Create a fresh and innovative artwork for the “impressionism” collection! That call/suggestion/recommendation I received at the beginning of March in an email from Art Heroes, the platform my webshop is connected to. I like that kind of challenge. And with my collection of world maps in mind, an impressionistic world map was a natural choice. But it wasn’t that easy, creating a map in the style of nineteenth-century French painters. New techniques First of all: what exactly is impressionism? The movement emerged around 1860, when young artists like Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, and Camille Pissarro began to experiment… Read More

Detail of a masonry relief with a world map, on which a part of Africa and adjacent oceans is visible

Cartography / Geen categorie

A World Map Made of Bricks

I have used many different materials to create world maps: from rusty steel to toilet paper and from stained glass to coffee beans. But a typical Dutch material was missing until now: brick. Time to fill that gap with a masonry relief. History The use of brick is not a recent phenomenon. The Mesopotamians used it five thousand years ago, as did the Romans a few millennia later. In the Netherlands, brick has been used as a building material since the thirteenth century. It’s not surprising that we have such a tradition of brick in this country. Apart from the… Read More

Fictional living room with a Japandi interior, a view of Reykjavik and on the wall a large world map with matching colors

Cartography / Geen categorie

A World Map in Japandi Colors

Japandi is an interior design style that combines elements from the far north and the distant east. It’s a very popular style in interior magazines and websites. I tapped into that popularity with a world map that seamlessly integrates into the concept. Japandi “Why is everyone opting for a ‘Japandi’ bathroom?” read the headline of a column by Floor Rusman in newspaper NRC that I came across a while ago. The column mostly talked about the uniformity of modern interiors, especially in magazines and TV programs. But my attention was particularly drawn to the term Japandi. Was it a contraction… Read More

World map in rainbow colors based on the elevations on our planet

Cartography / Geen categorie

A World Map in Rainbow Colors

The rainbow world map I present in this blog post is a direct result of the World Cup in Qatar. A tournament that quickly degenerated into a statement contest. That was of course mainly the fault of Fifa, which banned “political” expressions such as the OneLove band under penalty of a yellow card. And of the organizing committee that banned every piece of textile with rainbow colors from the stadiums. Rainbow flags It’s quite logical that rainbows have always appealed to people’s imagination. It is a beautiful yet harmless natural phenomenon that is also somewhat rare and fleeting. Over the… Read More

Part of the white (RAL 9001) version of the Rust Map of the Netherlands

Cartography / Geen categorie

The Rust Maps of the Netherlands

One of the most successful works in my webshop is the World Map Rust. And also the Scrapwood Map of the Netherlands is popular. It is therefore surprising that it took so long before I came up with the idea of ​​making a rust map of the Netherlands. Imagination Of course they’re not photos, these rust maps. They are entirely the product of my imagination. And of my laptop. I kept on fiddling with textures, filters, shadows, and other effects in Photoshop until I was satisfied. Ral colors I made the first version of the rusty world map with a… Read More

Thirteen pieces of space art by Frans Blok, framed and ready for an exhibition

Cartography / Space art / Various

World Maps and Space Art Exhibited

Over a year ago, I was asked if I wanted to have an exhibition of my work in the entrance hall of the RIVM, the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in Bilthoven. At that time, I had only a vague idea of the existence of that institute. But then first the emissions of nitrogen by agriculture and industry created a kind of national crisis in which the institute played a pivotal role. And after that the covid-19 pandemic came upon us. By now, there is probably nobody in the country who has never heard of RIVM.… Read More

Detail of a world map made of facemasks, carelessly thrown away on the pavement, showing the distinct shape of North America

Cartography / Various

Toilet Paper and Facemasks, Icons of the Pandemic

In times of crisis, people get creative. And in times of lockdown, people have time to spare. So it was to be expected that covid19 would lead to an explosion of art, as a way to make the best of the miserable situation we found ourselves in. This phenomenon struck me as well, in the form of two new world maps. Toilet rolls In March of this year, in the week we discovered that the corona pandemic would not pass the Netherlands completely unnoticed, I saw someone walking with three mega packs of toilet paper. And moments later another person… Read More

World map of a tiny section of a hypothetical Flat Earth, with the known oceans and continents in the center surrounded by various other land masses and bodies of water

Cartography

The Flat Earth

One of the most bizarre conspiracy theories has to be that of the Flat Earth. There is even a society with hundreds of members who gather at conventions to discuss the “evidence” that NASA and other agencies, with malicious intentions or out of ignorance, maintain the idea that our planet is a sphere orbiting the Sun. In their vision the Northpole is the center of everything and the Southpole is a wall of ice around the world that prevents us from falling into the void. But the mere fact that it is not day or night everywhere at the same… Read More

close-up of a digitally created stained glass world map, featuring Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranan and the North Atlantic

Cartography / Geen categorie

A Stained Glass World Map

It’s certainly not the first time I make a world map, but I’ve never made one in stained glass. Our planet played a part in the virtual stained glass window that I made of the famous Earthrise photo, but that is not the same. So it was about time to fill this gap in my collection. And here’s the result! Virtual glass The map is made of 1440 pieces of colored glass. Virtual glass, of course, because this artwork was made entirely with the help of Photoshop and a tiny bit of Autocad. Despite the abstraction, the elements that make… Read More

Fotograaf Frans Blok in actie op een zonnige herfstdag in het Groene Hart bij Woerden

Frans Blok – 3d artist, designer, photographer and city guide

De 3Develop-nieuwsbriefCreatieve muurdecoratie bij Werk aan de MuurBuy my work at Fine Art America

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