AEDM2012: Days 19-21

Happy Thanksgiving! Today I am thankful that we are not tied to hard-and-fast traditions and can make the holiday work for us instead of the other way around. To that end, we had a lazy morning, the kids are watching the parade, I'll be serving dinner at regular dinner time (because my kids really don't like having their large meal in the middle of the day, holiday or no), and I didn't have to do any extra cooking or cleaning. It's just the five of us, having a relaxing low-key day together at home. Thankfully! (Some years I'm game for a busier holiday. This is not one of those years.)

So I'm catching up here with the pieces created Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. This simple Life Map uses watercolored circles glued onto a watercolor background. The radiating spokes (written thoughts about each life stage) were just off the top of my head, and the path ends where I am now: parenting children (not babies any longer).

On Tuesday, I created a map of Monday.

I charted the day by the hour. It's hard to see in the scan, but I used grey watercolor to shade the nighttime hours and yellow to shade the daylight hours, although to be accurate I would have used grey for the day (no sun that day) and black for the night (but then you wouldn't be able to see my handwriting). You can see that particular day began at 2 am when my four-year-old showed up at our bedside, upset over a dream. Of course she spent the rest of the night with us, poor girl. The day ended around 11 when I finally went to bed. (No, I don't get enough sleep.)

On Wednesday, I used a grey watercolor pencil to make a sketch of a sea serpent, inspired by the old maps that purported to chart even the sea monsters.

I found this guy on an endpaper map from a library book about the Parthenon (we're moving into Ancient Greece in our homeschool), but that map was clearly inspired by early maps.

I'm hitting a wall, though, when it comes to mapping and map-inspired ideas. What might you like to see me map? Suggestions welcome. And it's funny, I keep coming across maps at home--such as a postcard with a bedrock map of Connecticut that I picked up at a CT state park over the summer purely because I liked the visual effect. Funny brain.

AEDM2012: Days 17-18

I spent the weekend making a map of the Land of Oz. I used my pre-cut pieces of paper and just kept going. If I were to do this again (and I might), I'd arrange the pieces ahead of time so that they cold fold down into a book and open up into a map. So consider this a second draft. My first draft was created along with my two younger kids--you can read about that little project here, if you want. We were mapping the Oz of the book, so this map contains quite a bit that isn't even mentioned in the movie. First I'll show you the pieces all laid out together so that the locations are where they belong, in relation to each other:

 All the action in the story primarily happens North (where the house lands) to South (where Glinda's castle is). The Wicked Witch of the West's castle is, of course, in the West. The East isn't mentioned at all in the book--we have no idea what's over there. Here are the map pieces one at a time, following the path from North to South:

From the house's landing spot to the second ditch

Over the river, through the poppy field, and into the Emerald City

From Emerald City to the forest with the monster

Into the Country of the Quadlings

 And, of course, over to the west for the castle:

Land of the Winkies

I do see a combination handmade book/map of Oz at some point in the future--but after this month is over, I think!

I have one more post until I'm caught up. I'm starting to run out of ideas though...

AEDM2012: Days 13-16

I finally scanned this afternoon, so I'm sharing three map-inspired pieces from last week. It counts as four days' work, though, because I carved another stamp, which took two full episodes of Freaks and Geeks on Netflix.

But I'm getting ahead of myself! The first thing I did was slice some printed-out maps into 1-inch strips. Then I glued them down with gel medium. This first has strips of the topo map that inspired the line maps in this post, arranged with space between the strips. When it was dry, I rolled some gesso on top. It's really light and delicate and hard to scan. The only other thing I did was add a light wash of blue watercolor in between the map strips. It's hard to see in person--it's so delicate--so it's probably impossible to notice here.

"File Copy"

I have to angle my screen just right to see this at all. I really love it in person.

The next piece used strips from a much more colorful 1947 map of Rhode Island and some of the surrounding states. I glued those down without spaces, added the gesso, and decided it needed a big compass rose. So big I had to go buy a carving block because the ones I have are all 4x6". This is the stamp I drew and then carved.

And here it is on the map collage.

"Sound"

I don't know if you're getting how much fun this is. Granted, some days I am just, What on earth am I going to do on this map theme again??? But I'm really enjoying a lot of what I come out with.

Finally, this last piece (for this post) is inspired by a 1997 topo map of the area around Killington, VT, which is also where I was married, two years later.

This was drawn with Zig Millennium pens and colored in with colored pencils.

I will continue to try to catch up with the posting without slacking on the making! Reminder, more Art Every Day Month participants can be found here.

AEDM2012: Playing Catch Up

Today's the 13th and it's not over yet, and by my count I have 11 pieces, so I'm only one day behind. That's because on Friday night I went to a friend's house instead of into the basement to create something, but getting out of the house was a good thing. We were juggling cars last week, so Friday, which is usually a long day because it's our homeschool co-op day, was even longer. Anyway, enough of my excuses. I have three maps to share today.

I drew this one on Saturday, using watercolor pencils. It's inspired by game boards, and again, I don't get too personal here, but this is drawn from my own experiences over decades, and is only meant to reflect my own experiences, and obviously in general terms because the map isn't that detailed.

As always, clicking makes it a little bigger.

This next one was drawn Sunday. I only used pencil, so I tried to adjust the scan digitally a bit so it shows up a little better. I tried, anyway. As I mentioned last time, I discovered USGS topographical maps are available as free downloads. Bliss! I love topo maps. Of course they're much smaller than the originals, if you print them out, although I already printed a 1958 map of Rhode Island and portions of the bordering states using the poster setting, so I have 12 sheets of paper to piece together to make the whole map. This pencil sketch used an 1899 map of my town as inspiration--it's not meant to be an exact copy.

And then on Monday, I drew one in color.

I didn't use pencil at all for this. I'm trying to gain confidence in just setting down the lines in a permanent way, and it worked out fine. I stuck to the colors of the map--blue for water and marshland (still pretty marshy around where I live, hurrah for wetlands, I say), brown for contour lines, roads, and railroad tracks. But hmm, I think I feel a multi-colored one of these coming on, just to play. But I like the blue and brown too, for an authentic old-time map feel. And I like the Zig milennium markers and the way they feel drawing line after line onto the paper. Very soothing.

I have no idea what today's map might look like. Thirty map-inspired pieces! Can I ever just take on a challenge at face value without making it more complicated for myself? Yeesh.

AEDM2012: Day 8

Wednesday I felt a Sick coming on, so I crawled into bed around 7 pm with some tea and honey, the heating pad, and a bunch of books and knitting. I mainly ignored the books and knitting; I finished the tea and dozed on and off, crawling out of bed only to dispatch children to bed at their appointed times. I felt better on Thursday, so I suppose my proactive approach worked? But all I managed on Wednesday was a little bit of sketching.

So Thursday night, I headed downstairs to do a little daily art plus some. First, a map. I rarely go to my childhood neighborhood even in my head (never in person, anymore), but I decided to create this quick, childlike map in a sepia watercolor pencil, hoping for an old-time look.

You can click to make it bigger. If you lived in that neighborhood with me (hi, Jill!) you may not recognize what I chose to put here. The BIG HILL is of course not all that big; but it seemed that way. And I don't know if we always sledded down it--how could that be? didn't they plow streets in the 70s/early 80s?--but I remember doing it at least once. The "deep dark woods" was really just a patch of trees on a hill between streets, but I loved going there and pretending I was Far Away. The "pond" was probably just an exaggerated puddle in a swampy area, but I did fall into it once, when Michelle (whose house is at the top of the BIG HILL) dared me to walk out onto the ice, and I did. As I said, it was a puddle; I only got wet up to my knees or so when the ice broke, but the rocks--which were there as fill, because they built houses on that swamp the next year--all froze to my corduroys, and it was funny. And I marked the way to Stop & Shop because at five years old, I figured I'd have to live in my parents' neighborhood forever because at least I knew how to get to the supermarket from there.

Well. That's more childhood reminiscing than I am likely to do for the next year. And how about this --I realized a couple hours after I drew this that I signed it with my maiden initials, abc, rather than my current ones. I signed it with the initials of the person who lived there. Funny Brains.

Also last night, I made some postcards for iHanna's latest swap, which has a theme of "empowerment," which can be interpreted any number of ways. I chose simply. Here's my group of cards to choose from (we only need five):

I already had all these backgrounds ready, so it was just a matter of deciding what to do with them. I am partial to the "Grow" cards; I think I will have to keep one for myself.

 Also using the theme of trees and growth:
 

And finally, more of the compass rose from earlier in the month. It's not the best choice with these backgrounds, but I think these two hold up okay.

There's still plenty of time to sign up for the postcard swap, if you're interested--right here!

AEDM2012: Days 5 + 6

As anticipated, I didn't manage any art on Sunday, but I completed these three pieces between Monday and Tuesday. The first uses contact paper image transfers of a black and white photocopy of a Berlin street  map. It's an insert on a AAA road map of Central Europe from 1968. It happened to photocopy in pieces so that's how I used it, deciding to fill in the center with my own map-inspired lines.

Before applying the transfers I used red watercolor and plastic wrap on the paper for the background.

The second piece was also inspired by a piece of this same late-60s road map, the legend describing the international road signs:

You can read it if you click on it. I decided to take the organization of shapes (triangles for danger, circular for instructions, and rectangular for information) and apply them to babies/toddlers. I brainstormed quite a few possibilities and decided to include two of each. Wouldn't it be great if babies came with instructional signs?

You can click on that to make it bigger, too.

The final piece is an abstract road map using tape resist and a secondary color palette. The compass rose is an older stamp I carved quite a while ago. Without it, I think it's just an interesting abstract. Hopefully with it, it starts to make you think "map."

I'm having fun. It's a good challenge to ask myself to create pieces that can be considered complete, although I could see going back into some of these later, too. I've noticed, though, that I spend quite a lot of "art every day time" facilitating the kids' art. When I have time, I'll post their artwork, too.

AEDM2012: Days 1-3

November is Art Every Day Month, and while I have no hope of posting daily, I do hope to create daily. Actually, I do that daily anyway--rarely does a day go by that I don't at least knit a little. But my goal for November is to create 30 pieces dealing with the theme of maps. Why maps? My kids like to make maps. I like maps--new ones, old ones, imaginary ones...they're intriguing. I recently borrowed Mapmaking With Children from the university library, seeking inspiration and ideas to use at home. My younger two kids and I found some old maps in the local antique store and made some color photocopies for collage purposes, and then while I was ordering some books for my daughter on Amazon, the site suggested I might like Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking. Why yes, Amazon, you smart cookie. Why yes I would.

So in other words, I have maps on the brain. To get ready for AEDM, I collaged with some pieces of an old US wall map (it hung in our hallway until it finally got too shredded around the edges and I replaced it). Around the collage, I brainstormed some map ideas, and when the Amazon order arrived, I read my new mixed-media mapmaking book. (It contains more step-by-step instructions on how to re-create the author's projects than I like, so I'm mostly looking at the pictures and reading the text for inspiration.)

November 1, I only managed sketches of ideas for compass roses--I spent most of the day vacuuming, doing laundry, and zipping things into allergen-free barriers thanks to my middle child's newly diagnosed dust-mite allergy. One of those sketches led to this painted rock, Orient:

I like clean geometric lines, but this was definitely informed by Mondrian, especially the color scheme. (Yes, a rock can be inspired by fine art; why not?)

Another sketch became this hand-carved stamp:

That was Day 2, Friday. On Saturday, I created these 2-dimensional pieces. I'd cut a stack of paper into 6"x9" pieces, so each finished work will be the same size...easier for compilation later, is what I was thinking. The first piece, Find Your Way, used the stamp and some purchased alphabet stamps.

I scanned this in, and the background, which is a mix of blue and green watercolor with plastic wrap on it while it dried, for the texture, is not quite as light and washed-out as it appears here. I used black block-printing ink for the stamps. The second piece, Map of My Brain, is also a scan.

You ought to be able to click on both of those for a bigger view. My brain hasn't been the best place in which to travel lately. For months now, actually. I don't usually get this personal on this blog, so I think I will just share the artwork without further explanation.

I may only manage sketches today, as well, as I'm heading out shortly to my assigned clean-up spot. I have to park, check in, and take a shuttle to the shoreline, which is under restricted access. I'm not sure what to expect, beyond coming home chilly, tired, and perhaps a little gutted.