Inspired by Places of the Heart; Artful Maps Part II
September 19, 2012
Of the eleven map designers in The Artful Map, A One-Page Journal, five elected to create maps unrelated to the North Cascades environment. Being in a place where the tools, materials, and design instruction were available to them allowed them to fulfill their concepts of maps that illustrated other meaningful places and heartfelt experience.

In these photos, her design takes shape and color becomes an important element. Added to her drawn central images, she designed a partial border of banners, spheres, and significant words.
As a child and as a young adult, the Girl Scout Camp Robbinswold played an important part in Ardi Butler's life. She brought reference materials (photos and a basic map) to use for her own illustrated map.
Sarah Baylinson took an image of a heart and created a metaphorical map. Careful design decisions and precise rendering yielded a clean, crisp image. Click on the image to the right for a close-up view of her heart-as-map.
Starting with the inspiration to map her own Camano Island home, Mary Ann Weeks used a GoogleEarth image to help get her started. She transferred her elegantly-shaped pencil renderings (above) to final paper. On the left you see her applying one of many layers of colored pencil to her drawing.
Above, Shannon Finch diligently works at transferring map, insets, titles, and illustrations to one sheet of paper.
Memories and iconic images of Ohai, CA, help make up Shannon's comemmoration of her many years of visiting the city where her parents previously lived. Drawing and watercoloring were things she had done little of, so making this complex map challenged her.
Here we are (minus Stephanie, Libby, and Jessica) at the trailhead sign for the Happy Creek Trail located 6 miles east of the Learning Center. I designed the map on this newly installed Park sign. This was our lunchtime field trip taken on Saturday, Sept. 8. Judging by the smiles, everyone was ready to leave projects on desks and get out into the forest.
After the end of the Artists' Retreat, each class visits the studios of the others that were also part of the retreat. Here you can see our classroom filled with visitors viewing the finished maps along with the work-ups done by everyone.
Well done, cartographers!
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