Map to Creativity
One of the exercises in my book is a map of your hand, and in my project I mapped the history of my creativity. Where did it come from? What did my ancestors do with their hands? Who has held my hand and supported my creativity? That project is a collage, done with the outline of my hand. Last week I tried a different approach, an abstracted version of my journey to creativity, inspired by both the landscape I so love as seen from the air, and the imagery of Hundertwasser, and artist I adore. In this exercise I tried to add intention to the shapes I made, by imagining they stood for parts...
Read MoreNight Maps
This week I started what I think will be a series for me, called Night Maps. The surface is layers of gesso, hide glue, Silks, acrylics and Wax. The surface of the sea is shiny, the land is not. Wandering the streets of this indigo dreamland makes me happy, and powerful. Creating places to go and places to see, that is mighty. I added a deep blue ocean. The sea was always close to me growing up, now I dream of it. I watch the sun setting over the Rocky Mountains and know that it is headed to the sea. “for whatever we lose (like a you or a me) / it’s always ourselves we find in...
Read MoreMapping in Zentagle, and a new book!
I have a friend across the world that I have never met. She just wrote a book, and I am very pleased to be a part of the blogroll to get the word out. Kass Hall lives in Australia and is a a Certified Zentangle® Teacher. This is something I knew not a thing about, until I got her book. Kass and I decided that a map was in order, since that combines techniques from both our books. I just took a very eventful trip from my home in Colorado to Ghost Ranch in northeastern New Mexico and decided that was the journey to map. First of all, I read the whole book since I was a Zentangle virgin. I...
Read MoreAncient Cities Stencils
This is a really bad photo of a wonderful new product by Artistcellar Stencils. They are 8.5 x 11, full page sizes, of four cities: Paris, Venice, Amsterdam and London. They are sturdy, and very detailed. Lisa, who is Artistcellar, asked me to play with them and of course I responded with the enthusiasm of any arty cartophile, heck yes! I just got them, and will be taking them on a retreat this weekend to see what wonders arise. After that, I will be posting a giveaway of the piece I come up with. Any of you that cannot wait to get these, buy them and send me your photo, I will post them...
Read MoreSelf Portrait Kid Maps
John Arbuckle is a teacher I have talked about before. I am having a great time reading and seeing what the kids in his 3-5 grade classes in Seattle are doing with my book. Here is the latest—they used the “Street Map” in the book and made self portrait maps of their heads. A few of them even have compass roses! Making a Self Portrait Street Map 1. If you want to do a project like this with kids, give them a profile of a head to start with. They can trace that, and add their own facial features to the the profile. 2. After they create the “streets” with tape,...
Read MoreAbstract Maps
This month I have an article on drawing abstract maps from Google Earth Images (which is legal, as long as you give them credit, BTW). Given that I have long been smitten with the view of our planet from airplanes, helicopters, any other hover vehicle will do, this was a project I long had in mind and I got a chance to share it. The article is in Cloth, Paper, Scissors current issue. Here are some of the maps I made. Starting with the Google Earth image of my house, I sketched out the basic lines on a piece of pastel paper. Here is the image I started with. Using PanPastel, I painted the...
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