Map18 Orientation

But who IS she?

Video by Philip Scott Johnson.
Who is she, you ask? The answers are here.

Map17 Cnwd Cylchoedd*

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Crop Circles: Artworks or Alien Signs?, from the National Geographic, no less (2002).
 *English/Welsh Dictionary

It's a Community

11" x 11", using only graphite, with just a touch of charcoal on the top one.

GOAL: To address the "negative spaces" and make them beautiful.  The top one approaches that. How'd I do?

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definitelyNF: Please stop with the "lol" every other sentence. It's killing me.

Cartocacoethes

Same size, process, and materials as the Socordia maps, except that for this one I shaved in graphite specks while the molding paste was still wet. Gives a nice organic look that I like.
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Pic! A portion of the Eagle Nebula, courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Mappa di Bedolina

This is a simplified graphic rendering of the Bedolina Map, a petroglyph at Valcamonica, Italy, in the Italian Alps. It is dated to about 2,500 BC. Click on it to get a closer look. It's well worth it!

(A truer, more detailed -- annotated? -- graphic image of it is here.)

The pic below (and this) is what it looks like in situ. Hmmm. Time for a field trip to Italy?

MORE:

. Rock Art in the Alps - Valcamonica
. Rock Drawings in Valcamonica
. The new history of cartography, UNESCO Courier, June, 1991 by J.B. Harley
. Cartocacoethes: Why the World’s Oldest Map Isn’t a Map / October 13, 2008 by John Krygier

YET MORE, these are COOL map sites:
. Cartophilia
. Map of the Week

. Strange Maps

Earth as Art

Images from NASA's Landsat program.  Below is the Niger River, Massina Mali, taken seven years ago.

Socordia

These are 11" x 11" on Strathmore Aquarius II watercolor paper. I laid on a couple of swaths of Golden's Light Molding Paste with a palette knife. I let that dry overnight. Then I used graphite powder, graphite sticks, Stones Crayons, Oilbar, white Poly- chromos and a lot of scrubbing with alcohol and paper towels (to get back to the white).

Confluence Map11

Slightly less literal. But getting away from the square format.

Same ground as used on Map10.

Snowmobile

Brave Car Rescuer at work! Actually he's already made some very good progress, considering the roof of the car was entirely buried under about two feet this morning.

✱ Note the distance of the car from the pavement and the depth of the pile between it and the car.
✱ Note also the little kid lounging on the pile near the back windshield. Maybe he takes a turn at the shovel later?

". . . a collective 40 inches of snow fell on the District over a six-day period" <--- ouch

Oxbow Map10

Map10 revised.
Even more literal.
Yikes.
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Map10,
too literal.
Must revert.
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"Once a channel begins to follow a sinusoidal path the amplitude and concavity of the loops increase dramatically due to the effect of helical flow sweeping dense eroded material towards the inside of the bend, and leaving the outside of the bend unprotected and therefore vulnerable to accelerated erosion, forming a positive feedback loop."

Underpainting for Map10:
✱ Golden Light Molding Paste (Am I in love? It's like kindergarten.)
✱ string and various kitchen implements (including an angel food cake slicer, both the name and the purpose of which were a mystery to me until just this minute, though I have owned it for a couple of decades)
✱ Neoart "water-soluble wax pastels"
✱ gouache
✱ DSmith WC sticks
✱ Schmincke AQUA "effect spray"
✱ W + N Granulation Medium, sprayed on
✱ alcohol, also sprayed on

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Snote o'the Day: "I used to be Snow White but I drifted." Mae West

SnNo! SnNot again!

This is excellent. I know you'll get mesmerized by the agonized trees on the right, but try to keep your eye on the teddy bear.

Courtesy of DCist.

Muncibeḍḍu et Voscu

Is stratovolcano a stupendous word, or what? Its head held high.

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Underpainting for (possible) Monte Etna portrait.Gouache and DSmith WC sticks.

For this one I pressed coiled string down into the still soft Golden Light Molding Paste, then pulled it up, leaving a series of spiral troughs in the surface texture. Just deep enough to make an impression but not so deep it's too obvious.

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Muncibeḍḍu = 'beautiful mountain' and voscu = forest in Sicilian. Who knew?

Snowmageddon Day 2

"restful alertness, inner silence, and wide-awake self-awareness"

Well yeah, keen -- but the most euphoric is the outer silence. Those of you who live on busy streets know exact-a-mundo what I am saying here. All of a sudden yesterday you realized, hey wait a minute!  How damn QUIET it is. The only thing stirring were laughing kids with sleds and the (very) occasional snow plow.

Wow, what a great place this would be to live if it was as bucolic (Arcadian?) as this, um, every day . . . Oh. Wait.

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Pic of Snowpocalypse '10 from downtown, courtesy of and with permission from Abby C.

Dati'â 'ëjba*

Same sequence, process, materials as Map7, except this time I 'finished' it. Might work in more magentas in the land areas.

Q: Is it beginning to look a little too literal now? Hmmm.

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* Dati'â 'ëjba = Mother river (loosely) in Xavánte. Xavánte is an Amerindian language, a member of the Ge family of languages, spoken by the Xavánte people in about 170 villages within the territory of eastern Mato Grosso, in Brazil. (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈmatu ˈɡɾosu] - lit. "Thick Woods") (1)
More here.

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PIC: Father Winter major smack-down. That person is walking down the middle of the street, past a row of parked cars. Yes, a row of parked cars. Good thing I have a leg of lamb the size of a 3-year old child in the frig. I will survive!

Frosty Morn

Pic from the windah. Winter? Yeah, enough already thank you.

That is all.

Map7-under

I began with 11" x 11" piece of Fabriano Artistico 300lb. rough watercolor paper, taped all around to a masonite board. Then I laid on a mixture of Golden Light Molding Paste and Golden Fiber Paste. I used a palette knife and then kind of patterned and striated the surface with a stiff brush. Let that dry overnight.

This is the underpainting, done with gouache, DSmith wc sticks, and some pastels. All along mucked up variously with:
✱ Schmincke AQUA "effect spray"
✱ W & N Granulation Medium, sprayed on
✱ alcohol, also sprayed on

I was going to put various greens over the magenta areas, but I kinda like this.

Hmmm. Must contemplate . . . .