Those of you who are following my instagram stream have probably seen my maps project. I slipped into it when a teacher at the German Saturday School in Leicester asked me about how to bind a board book (she needed to bind together some teaching materials). I feel a bit like giving away my secrets, but here it is, I showed her this:
These are old boards, cut and bound just for illustration of the process.
Looking at them, I thought those stains looked like islands. Shortly after, the first maps followed.
By now I have filled both those books, and I cut more board into A6 shape this time, and will see where it brings me. Generally I am looking forward to working on the maps before deciding whether and in which order they might appear in a Landscapes III book. I sometimes felt inhibited by the fact that I was working in a finished book.
Then again, this gave me a certain drive. I hope I’ll be able to maintain it. If you would like to see more of them, please do visit my instagram. I try to post one map a day. The maps are changing in style, too. This is the one I drew today:
I finished Landscapes II first, here’s a little walk-through:
One of the enjoyable things about this project is that I get to use my drafting tools:
I have not forgotten that I promised to write about these technical pens that I screw into my compass. I wrote a blog post about my drafting tools in 2015, (Part I about ruling pens) and never presented you part II which was supposed to feature the pens. Funny that it is already 3 years now. It’s been on my to do list ever since then and I must have a half finished draft sitting somewhere. Huh. Although it’s not forgotten, I suppose I have to admit the chances that I’ll still deliver are slim. Anyways, using your compass with ink is great fun. There are two ways (for me) to do that, either I screw in what essentially is a ruling pen, or I can also screw in these ink cartridge based technical pens. I can’t really say why, but ink makes compasses really fun for me. That’s probably the slumbering math soul inside me.