London love

An appropriate post for Valentine's Day, as it's about love: in London, and for a husband.

A week or two ago, a friend asked if I'd be willing to do a commission for her. It's coming up for her 1st wedding anniversary, which traditionally is "paper", and she wondered if I'd be able to do a map for her to give to her husband, based around places in London special to them. It would involve stylised drawings of important locations centred on a specific area of London, and for the look and method, I was given free reign. It was a bit intimidating - I've not really done a streetmap style map before (I've mainly done whole countries rather than areas), and you always have that lurking worry that what you do won't meet their expectations, when you're doing something new, and specific for an individual. It's made even worse when it's something being done for a friend and you really don't want to let them down! I'd also not filled such a large area of paper with filigree before, and my hands need regular breaks when doing the filigree to stop them from hurting, so I couldn't just do it all in one sitting, and it'd need to be fitted in around everything else in my life.

So, ignoring my worries, I got on with it as fast as possible, as it was needed reasonably soon. I decided to use the main streets of the area as divisions to split the map up, as otherwise it could be an overwhelming mass of doodles. There was also a canal involved, so I had to decide how to differentiate the different areas. I decided on stippling for the roadways, and bubbles (appropriately enough) for the canal.

Basic map with roads and canal

Then I had to figure out how to draw, in very small form, the buildings my friend had given me the information on. This took a bit of research (she very helpfully gave me the links and info though!), and some doodling and asking people if they could recognise what they saw. On such a small scale, it can be hard to include the detail that makes things recognisable, so they inevitably become stylised and sometimes, to show things that are recognisable you have to go slightly away from the actual reality. This is what I had to do for St Pancras station, as I had the hotel and the train station to show, but couldn't really duplicate the drawing in different locations. Then I had to make sure I was placing them correctly on the map, which involved a couple of "whoops, not quite there moments (it's tricky when you're not familiar with an area)...

Camden Town Hall added

Then my sketches were replicated on the map in pencil, drawn over when I was happy with them, and the pencil underdrawing removed:

Main drawings added

After the addition of some relevant text on a couple of the roads, I began filling in the filigree, dots, and bubbles.

First filigree, road text and road stipples

More filigree, and canal bubbles completed

Corner filling up

Roads without stippling yet

Almost there!

Just the roads to finish...

And, after 10 hours of work , it was finished! Forgive me if I indulge myself with too many photos here, but I'm quite proud of this, I think it's ended up as a really interesting looking drawing from a distance, that gets even more interesting as you get closer and realise the detail it's made up of. I hope it's well received on the anniversary!

The finished map

Roads

Roads

Roads, canal and buildings

The first of the RACKS

A couple of weeks ago, I sent off the first of my Random Acts of Craft Kindness. I was a bit nervous about these, as they were maps drawn on dried elm tree leaves, but the leaves are rather delicate and I wasn't sure hoe well they'd survive the gentle care of the Royal Mail. So I used thick card to protect them, wrapped each up carefully, and crossed my fingers.  Luckily, they seem to have arrived completely intact!
The first of my RACKS were a success :D

Both leaves, wrapped up in thick card for protection before posting

Leaf RACK 1

Leaf RACK 2

Now....onwards, to more makings, and more RACKS. I got far more volunteers than the 12 people I was originally expecting, so the RACKS may be a wee bit more frequent than I had initially planned :)

A personalised map of South America

A friend wanted a memento of his daughter's travels around South America, marking events and places personal to her, so he asked me to create a personalised map relating to her trip. It was an ongoing process, as we worked out how it was going to work, so to begin with, I started off by doing the outline of South America...

Then, it was decided that rather than doing the whole continent, I'd only fill in the countries that the daughter had actually visited, so I went back, and outlined the countries. I also got information on the things that the daughter had been up to, and I started working out which of those I could recreate recognisably in a tiny stylised way, and began placing them in pencil around the map in the appropriate places.

Once the main items were in place, as I waited for more information on Brazil activities, I began to darken the country borders to make them clearer when the doodles were in, and began doodling in the edges. I really quite liked it at this point, with just touches of filigree at various random places.

Once I had the final bits of information, I got going on the filling in. So, 8 hours of work later, this is the final map, incorporating llamas, quad bikes, cycling, wineries, lots of drinking, Gay Pride, many credit and debit card losses, a capybara, a boat ride, Machu Picchu, a bungee jump, a piranha, a inter-peak cable basket, lots of hiking, a sloth, an anaconda, a cockroach, a phone in a drink, a waterfall, and the staple of travellers everywhere, table tennis.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and hopefully the recipient will be too :D

I don't always get it right....

Recently, I made a fantasy island map. I took my time, and filled it all in: lovely. I crumpled it up, as part of the ageing process: good. Then I did the next step: singing the edges. Unfortunately, in this case, the singe became a burn! It unexpectedly caught light, and ate into the body of the map, and it was quite a struggle to stop it from burning up the whole map!

Gah: what a waste of time and effort! It's eaten too deep into the paper for the map to look nice, so I can't sell it. Oh well!

Land of ice and...ice

After my last map of New Jersey, the next one was slightly more of a problem, mainly due to lack of animals! Iceland isn't well known for its excess of animals, so for this I had to make some specific decisions - nothing recently or deliberately introduced, so that ruled out reindeer, and escapees like rabbits. Damn.

So, that meant doing something I don't normally do - include marine life. They don't quite fit with my idea of what should be on a land map, but I needed animals, and they had been suggested by the commissioner of the map, so in they went, and I think they worked out well :)

So I figured out ways to draw them, sketched a pencil outline of the map with my lightbox, drew the animals in pencil...

...and then drew over them in pen, and began doodling.

And doodling.

And doodling.

And doodling.

And now, the finished map is available here. Yay!

The Garden State

And that's another map done! This time, it's a US state rather than an entire country, but it's still just as much work as it's the same size. I also still need to research the animals that are typical of the region, although in this case most of them were ones I had already developed for the main USA map, so I only had to work out how to do a few new ones, like the skunk and the snapping turtle.

So here's New Jersey, as it grew last night and this morning....

And a bit of the detail of the print (the originals are drawn on a creamy coloured paper, the prints are on a gleaming white card):

On Etsy now, here.

Onwards to the next countries on order, via a special request....

Gettin' mah craft on!

I've decided to take some time to focus on getting myself up to date with  some of the craft projects I have planned. In only 2 days over the festive break, I managed to get quite a few things made, photographed, and listed in my Etsy shop:

So, I'm hoping to spend some more time crafting, and less dawdling online. To start with, I'm working on a map of New Jersey:

Next up: maps of Iceland, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Scotland, England...

The end product

I finally got a chance to go to the print shop, to get good copies made of the maps, and a digital copy made for future (as the original of the New Zealand map is going to my brother). The copies are on lovely, stiff 300gsm card, and it was even sunny enough today that I got to take photos of them in proper light!

So, if you're crying out for a map of New Zealand or the UK, filled with animals and filigree, here ya go!

Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland...

All those bits that make up Great Britain, the United Kingdom, Britlandshire...after many, many hours of intensive doodling to fill in the sketched outline of the country, this is the completed map, yay! Large enough to show the details of the filling.

There are 16 animals hidden in the map (or not-so-hidden: I deliberately darkened them to make them slightly easier to spot, in among the swirls and twirls):

Badger
Hare
Deer
Hedgehog
Swan
Snail
Mouse
Heron
Frog
Butterfly
Snake
Dragonfly
Fox
Squirrel
Robin
Highland Cow

And here's some closeups, also enlargeable:

Starting again

So, I tried hand drawing the UK map. After 5 hours of sketching. erasing, redrawing, erasing, and drawing again...I decided my retaining some level of mental health was more important than trying to draw a map by hand!
So, I downloaded the clearest outline of the UK that I could find, and spend another 3 hours tracing over it, first roughly in pencil....then more accurately in pencil....

...then drawing over those lines even more accurately, in ink. Beginning with Scotland:

Then, adding England and Wales:

Next...Irelandshire! Then, the fun part - filling the interior with filigree and hidden animals :D

Filling the UK

 So, following from my previous post, I asked people on Etsy what animals worked as representations of British wildlife.

Here (in contrasting colours for ease of seeing the main shape), are some of the suggestions, they're all about an inch across, or less.

Badger

Hare

Squirrel

Hedgehog

Robin

Fox

Snail

Deer

Highland cow