Category: Art

London Trees, Pyongyang Architecture

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Blue Crow Media, which for the past few years has published a series of maps focusing on urban architecture, sent me samples of two of their most recent maps. The Great Trees of London Map is the first of a series of maps highlighting noteworthy trees in a city’s urban forest (Amazon). (A similar map for New York is forthcoming.) The second is another in their line of architecture and urban design maps: Pyongyang Architecture Map features 50 buildings in the reclusive North Korean capital, and includes text and photographs shot by Guardian architecture critic Oliver Wainwright (Amazon). An architecture map of Tbilisi, Georgia, in English and Georgian, has also been released (Amazon). Each map costs £8.

Previously: Architectural Maps of London; London Underground Architecture and Design Map.

Lord of Maps: More Real-World Fantasy Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Lord of Maps

Here’s another map artist who draws maps of real-world places in the style of fantasy maps: Isaac of Lord of Maps has around 30 maps—mostly of U.S. states, but also a few countries and one city—available for sale as prints of various sizes. Style-wise they’re dead ringers for Christopher Tolkien’s maps of Middle-earth, down to the hill signs, trees and red lettering.

Previously: Callum Ogden’s Fantasy Map of North America; Callum Ogden’s Fantasy Map of North America; Maps Middle-earth Style: By Hand and by ArcGIS; What Does a Fantasy Map Look Like?

Anton Thomas’s Next Project: Wild World

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Anton Thomas

Here’s what Anton Thomas, whose pictorial map of North America was released earlier this year, is working on now: Wild World, a pictorial map of the natural world.

While you won’t find cities or borders on this map, you will find geographic labels. This is important. From mountain ranges to deserts, rivers to rainforests, the labels here offer a detailed, accurate outline of Earth’s natural geography.

The hundreds of different animals can evoke a feeling of place like few things can. Paired with the labels, this allows the map to be a powerful resource for learning Earth’s basic geography. While, I hope, drawing attention to the beauty and fragility of the natural world.

As of this month, Thomas has finished North America and has moved on to South America; he expects to be finished by the middle of next year (which is a lot faster than his first map, which took more than five years). The map uses the Natural Earth projection. [Kottke]

Previously: The North American Continent: A Pictorial Map by Anton Thomas; An Update on Anton Thomas’s Map of North America; Preorders Open for Anton Thomas’s North America Map.

A Crowdfunded, Hand-drawn Atlas of Scotland

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Artist and writer Andrew Barr is crowdfunding for what he is calling “the first major Scottish atlas for over 100 years”: a hand-drawn, hardcover Atlas of Scotland:

Produced as a visually striking hardback book, combining text with illustrated maps, the Atlas will shed new light on Scotland’s size and resources, its cultural and political history, as well as its long standing as one of the ancient kingdoms of Europe and the richness of its international connections.

As satellite images replace traditional paper atlases, modern technology leaves us with an incomplete picture of the nation. By returning to map-making in pen and ink, and by retelling the story of Scotland’s history and culture, this Atlas aims to delve deeper into the fabric of the land and reveal one of the world’s oldest nations in a whole new light.

Very much a nationalist project—and a personal project as well, which is not how atlases are usually done nowadays, hand-drawn or not. The atlas is projected to ship in October 2021. [History Scotland]

Beaded Maps of Canada and the United States

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

CBC News reports on a collaborative project to create province-by-province and state-by-state beaded maps of Canada and the United States. “Since March, dozens of Indigenous artists had been taking up a challenge to bead their states and provinces. Their hard work, diversity in beading styles, techniques, and cultural influences can be seen in a final map that was recently unveiled of both countries.” The project was coordinated by CeeJay Johnson of Kooteen Creations.

The Ceramic Map of Delft

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Mappery has photos of the new Keramieken Kaart van Delft (Ceramic Map of Delft), a remarkable large ceramic mosaic map based on a 1672 map by Frederick de Wit that is mounted to a brick wall on a street in Delft, the Netherlands. Designed by artist Nan Deardorff-McClain, the map was supported by a crowdfunding campaign and built by around 500 local volunteers. The grand opening was to have been in March, but the pandemic intervened. More photos are available at the project’s Facebook and Instagram pages; a short video on the making of the map is below (and on YouTube). Coverage in the Algemeen Dagblad is in Dutch, as are most of the links.

Dan Bell, the Ordnance Survey, and Fantasy Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Dan Bell, whose “Tolkien-inspired” maps of real-world places have been a thing for a while now, makes an appearance on the Ordnance Survey’s blog to demonstrate how he uses OS maps in his creative process.

Previously: Dan Bell’s ‘Tolkien-Style’ Maps of the Lake District; Maps Middle-earth Style: By Hand and by ArcGIS; What Does a Fantasy Map Look Like?

Alex Russell’s Great Maps of Brooklyn

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Alex Russell, “The Great Map of Williamsburg” (2020)

Last October, Alex Russell released his first pictorial map of a Brooklyn neighbourhood, the Great Map of Greenpoint. It was begun, he says, “as an effort to drive business around the neighborhood. As a restaurant owner in Greenpoint, it was to draw attention to everything this great little area had to offer.” His follow-up, the Great Map of Williamsburg (above), ran straight into the pandemic, as Greenpointers reports:

“My printer closed their doors for a few months just as my order went in,” Russell said of his map, which went to print right as the coronavirus halted New York’s spring. “Sadly, I have recently discovered that a handful of the businesses on The Great Map of Williamsburg have closed due to COVID. I will be delivering their maps to them this week as a bittersweet memory of what was. Some of them, like Brooklyn Charm, had been there for over a decade. I feel honored to have had the chance to be a part of their history.”

Both maps are available for sale as posters; Williamsburg costs $40 and Greenpoint costs $25. [News12 Brooklyn]

Mapping the Monuments of St. Louis

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
How would you map the monuments of St. Louis?
Monument Lab

In the summer of 2019, a research project spearheaded by Monument Lab asked St. Louis residents and visitors to draw personal maps of the city’s monuments and important sites. “Some maps celebrate famous sites like the St. Louis Zoo and the statue of St. Louis himself atop Art Hill in Forest Park. Others point to things that have been removed from the landscape, like the mounds built by native Mississippians,” St. Louis Public Radio reports. “Another shows a street map of downtown St. Louis with notations for ‘incidents of racism, from microaggression to racial violence.’” A total of 750 people contributed maps, which you can see at this Flickr gallery as well as on the project website, which has accompanying data and analysis. [Osher]

An Illustrative Map of Japan

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
An Illustrative Map of Japan
David Cook

David Cook has released his Illustrative Map of Japan, a hand-drawn pictorial map showing the principal Japanese islands in classic oblique, pictorial-map style. On Reddit Cook says that it took ten years, on and off, from concept to completion: “Conceptually I started in 2010, but actually drawing this version didn’t start until 2012 when I finally settled on a size and perspective. Tbh I did not work on it continuously all those years. The drawn portion wrapped up in 2017 and I didn’t start coloring it in until 2019.” It’ll be available for sale as a 24-by-36-inch print at some point. [r/MapPorn]

‘The Monsters of Maps’: A Video About Caricature Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

“The Monsters of Maps,” a 10-minute video by Richard Tilney-Bassett, explores the late-19th- and early-20th-century phenomenon of “serio-comic” or caricature maps, which are no stranger to us here. In the video Richard wonders what a modern-day caricature map would look like; I’d point him to the work of Andy Davey (see here and here).

How to Make an Illustrated Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Five Squares + One Triangle in My Neighborhood (Nate Padavick)
Nate Padavick (The New York Times)

In the travel section of yesterday’s New York Times, map illustrator Nate Padavick offers a way to make lemonade from travel-restriction lemons with a short guide to making an illustrated map (pictorial map, map illustration—the terms are roughly interchangeable) of a favourite place—a neighbourhood, a vacation spot, “a place you’ve never been.”

The rigid and scientific rules of cartography simply do not apply here! Nope. While an illustrated map is often a wildly useless tool for providing directions, it can be a beautiful and highly personal reflection of a place you, friends and family know quite well. It can tell a story, a personal history, or be a unique lens through which one can experience a special place. An illustrated map can be loose and hand-drawn, filled with fun drawings and doodles that together make a sometimes inaccurate, but always spot on record of a memory or a place from one’s own perspective.

Not the first time we’ve seen map art as lockdown activity. Previously: Maps from Isolation; CityLab Wants Your Hand-Drawn Quarantine Maps; Still More Coronavirus Maps; Fuller’s Quarantine Maps.

CityLab Wants Your Hand-Drawn Quarantine Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

CityLab is asking readers to send them hand-made maps of their life under quarantine.

We’re inviting readers to draw a map of your life, community, or broader world as you experience it under coronavirus. Your map can be as straightforward or subjective as you wish. You might show key destinations, beloved neighbors, a new daily routine, the people or restaurants you miss, the future city you hope to see, or anything else that’s become important to you right now. It might even be a map of your indoor life. For an added challenge, try drawing from memory.

Deadline is 20 April, with a selection of submissions to be featured in a future article.

Prior art would include Fuller’s quarantine maps and Kera Till’s “Commuting in Corona Times” (previously).

Preorders Open for Anton Thomas’s North America Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

North America: Portrait of a Continent (Anton Thomas)It’s been years in the making, but prints of Anton Thomas’s pictorial map, North America: Portrait of a Continent, can now be pre-ordered.

Three versions are available: a 42×52-inch (107×132.5-cm) poster, a 44×54-inch (111.7×138.3-cm) giclée print in a limited edition of 1,200, and a 48×59-inch (121×149.6-cm) giclée print in a limited edition of 400. Prices will be shown in your local currency: in Canadian dollars they’re $95, $490 and $765, respectively. These are discounted prices for pre-orders. Shipping outside Australia will be by UPS (I was quoted a shipping fee of US$35 at checkout), and will begin on April 16.

My main concerns are where I’m going to put it, and how I’m going to have it framed. But I’ll worry about that later.

Previously: The North American Continent: A Pictorial Map by Anton Thomas; An Update on Anton Thomas’s Map of North America.