Tag Archives: map

The View from Whiteheart Michigan

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This is another commission that I drew quite some time ago but didn’t have permission to share until now, and it is the map of the fictional town of Whiteheart and environs as described in Bonnie Jo Campbell’s forthcoming (WW Norton, January 2014) novel, The Waters, which is an excellent novel that you should pre-order from you local independent bookstore or library.

You can read some more of my thoughts about this novel here and you can read some of Bonnie Jo Campbell’s thoughts about the map here.

As for the map, it took me a goodly time to figure it out. Originally she asked if I could do it in the style of the famous “View From 9th Avenue” New Yorker cover, and I did start out with a more conscious imitation, but as the project progressed, it sort of expanded in all kinds of direction that took it further and further away from that aesthetic (including changing from a portrait to a landscape orientation). Plus, to fit the aesthetic of the novel, I needed to fit a lot of plants and animals. And the roads and the sizes of things and their relationship to other things grew murky. I just had to make choices and roll with them and I’m all in all pretty pleased with the result, but also I wish it could have been twice as big and a little more technically accurate. There are so many more things I could have drawn.

Fun anecdote: in early drafts, a raven appeared in the top right of the map, but the raven didn’t make the final edit of the story, and the very last change I was asked to make was to replace him with some mosquitoes. Hilariously, following a series of events that began with me getting COVID, my MacBook could no longer pair with my Wacom tablet, and I was under deadline…so I drew those mosquitoes with one finger, using the touchpad. Do not recommend. I ended up replacing the MacBook with a Lenovo Yoga 9i, which is a far superior machine. The keyboard of that MacBook was a crime against Apple customers. It was literally an impediment to writing.

Anyway, this map, in a slightly altered configuration, will theoretically serve as the frontispiece of the novel (I say theoretically, because it did not appear in the ARC, and I believe things when I see them) which should be a great feather in my cap. Typically, major publishers only work with in-house artists, but Bonnie Jo went to bat for this map, and as far as I know, it will be there.

Road Trip Memorabilia

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The day before we left on our epic Grand Canyon adventure, I was at Target looking for things to entertain kids when a thought occurred to me. The Man doesn’t use printed maps anymore, depending entirely on his phone for directions, so I thought it would be fun for the kids to buy a state map and mark our route on it as we traveled. It could provide a sense of perspective that you don’t get from a 5.7 inch diagonal display (The Man is a fan of his ZMAX phablet).

But what would we do with this map afterward? Would its destiny be to moulder amongst other forgotten relics of road trips past?

Perhaps influenced by my Trickster’s Hat experiments, I had another idea. I saved up all the ephemera from the trip (national park handouts and such) and printed out a couple dozen photos. (When was the last time I printed out photos? Maybe 2006! We didn’t even print our wedding pictures.) Then I mounted the photos on the map.

6 days of no holds barred sightseeing, compressed into a single rectangle.

6 days of no holds barred sightseeing, compressed into a single rectangle.

As it turned out, there wasn’t room for the ephemera. There were empty spaces, but none big enough for the inset maps or other things. Instead, I printed out a second round of photos with small details like flowers, petroglyphs, and animals, and added them like marginalia.

Close up on (most of) the route.

Close up on (most of) the route.

Then I remarked the route, color-coding it by day so you can easily see where we drove on each leg of the journey. We were gone for 6 days, which allowed me to make the color code a rainbow. Then I bordered each photo with the corresponding color so you can easily see on which day any particular image was taken.

Use this product to stick things to paper.

Use this product to stick things to paper.

This project is perhaps a bit craftier (rather than artier) than the stuff I usually do. As evidence, I present this glue product. I wasn’t sure what to use, so I asked the Cat, who is an accomplished scrapbooker. She recommended this stuff, which is a very sticky glue loosely affiliated with a waxy tape. You just run the device over the thing you wish to glue and the glue transfers effortlessly from the tape to your picture, and doesn’t wrinkle the paper like some glue does.

You have to be careful because it is extremely sticky. If you run the device over a spot you’ve already gotten glue on, it can jam the works; and once you place your image, it’s pretty difficult to get it back up again, so you need to get it right the first time.

I had the map professionally framed, because it’s a weird size and there was no way I could buy a frame off the rack. Although lately I wonder if I ought to learn how to frame things myself. They mounted it and made it look quite professional, and I picked it up this afternoon. The kids loved it. The framers loved it too.

Detail from days 5 and 6: hiking Boyton Canyon and the Sinagua ruins near Sedona.

Detail from days 5 and 6: hiking Boyton Canyon and the Sinagua ruins near Sedona.