Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Faceted Maps

The other day I was doodling map ideas in a coffeeshop, and started building this:




It's not maplike in the way my other drawings are, but it's got the same kind of linear fractal aesthetic. I definitely think of them as roads connected into neighborhoods, they're just arranged a little differently. I played around with color when I got home:



I'm not sure how much I like that, though. I think they need some kind of color, but maybe I'm just not good enough with colored pencils to get the effect I want with them. They might work out better with a light watercolor wash that changes over the course of the drawing. I do want to delineate "neighborhoods" with color, and that might be a good way to do it. I started building another drawing on watercolor paper, using archival pens:





I've put this project on hold to work on new "mosaic" style maps (more on those soon!), but it was a sort of promising side project. If anyone has any ideas about extending it, let me know in the comments!


2 comments:

  1. I always loved how organic your work felt. BTW, I came across an artist that for some reason reminded me of you, even though the media she works with is totally different. Her name is Sarah Sze, http://www.sarahsze.com/index.html.
    Maybe it's because, like you, she makes environments or even more specifically, habitats. It's really intriguing work and I hope you like it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ooh, fun! Her site has surprisingly little information about what she actually does, but after a quick Google search I found something I really liked:
    http://dailyserving.com/2007/08/sarah-sze/
    It looks just like the twig habitations I was working on for my senior show, complete with the clamps I used to keep them upright! I might want to post about this artist later on... Thanks for pointing her out!

    ReplyDelete