Rotterdam in Colour — The Vibrancy of a Colourful City

by Arjen Roos

For me, Rotterdam is a city all about movement, architecture and constant change. In *Rotterdam in Verf — Dynamiek van een Kleurrijke Stad*, I have translated that energy into an expressive cityscape in which the recognisable skyline merges with an explosion of paint, colour and texture.

The basis of this artwork stems entirely from my own photography of Rotterdam. From various photographs, I selected the buildings and characteristic elements of the city and brought them together to form my own composition. I then digitally traced and coloured the skyline by hand. In doing so, I deliberately avoided attempting to create a photographically accurate representation. Proportions and distances were allowed to change in order to create a stronger composition. Nevertheless, typical Rotterdam landmarks such as the Euromast, the Erasmus Bridge and the SS Rotterdam remain clearly recognisable.

The dark buildings form a powerful silhouette, whilst red and light colour accents along the edges bring the architecture to the fore from the background. Surrounding this, the image bursts open in blue, red, black, white and gold. Brushstrokes, splashes, drips and small irregularities give the cityscape an almost physical energy. In the water, too, the skyline becomes more fluid: the reflection gradually merges into colour, paint and abstract structures.

For this final phase, I combined my own digital painting with generated images of paint splashes and paint textures. I incorporated these as separate layers, blending, adjusting and further processing them until they became part of the final composition.

In this way, ‘Rotterdam in Verf’ combines photography, drawing, digital painting and generative techniques into a single mixed-media artwork: a colourful portrait of a city that never quite stands still.