The Explorer's Notebook: Fantastical Cartography: Maps and Artwork From Imaginary Places

Ghosts, Monsters, Witches and Ghouls...

2011-10-08T14:27:00.007-04:00

Be careful to choose your direction wisely this Halloween...

My latest Wayfinding sign is available in the Interimaginational Institute Gift Shop as a poster (just right for your Halloween party decor!), on party invitations, on greeting cards, and on a trick-or-treat bag!

My Halloweenland map is also available on a number of products in the Holidays & Occasions section, and the original map is also available in my Etsy shop.

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Yer Verrry Own Treasure Island, Matey

2011-10-03T16:43:00.005-04:00

I am very excited to share my latest offerings, in the works for a long time: custom 8" x 10" initial-shaped treasure maps! These are original watercolor maps, customized in multiple ways, starting with any letter of the alphabet, to make the perfect gift for your favorite swashbuckler or pirate of any age. Perfect for kids or adults as birthday gifts, Christmas gifts and holiday gifts.

Please allow four weeks for completion (order now to beat the holiday rush!). More details here.

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Reconnecting

2011-09-04T11:58:00.010-04:00

I never, ever dreamed that being a parent could be so all-consuming, and by all-consuming, I mean we have a child who never, ever wants to be left alone, even across the room, but also does not usually want to be carried or held because there's too much wiggling and toddling to be done, and isn't really old enough to "help" with all the chores around the house.

Although he's thinking of taking up golfing.

I am mostly okay with all of this, even though it's been a very difficult adjustment for me to have so little time to draw, paint, read or even clean the house. He needs us. I do not believe we are spoiling him by holding him, cuddling him to sleep, or by co-sleeping until very recently (in fact, co-sleeping was an amazing discovery that made night nursing vastly easier on the whole family. We gradually stopped, not because I wanted to, but because Connor wasn't getting enough sleep, partly because our bed is too small, and partly because he's an extremely light sleeper and my husband and I both thrash a lot in our sleep), by still nursing occasionally for comfort, or by playing with him a lot instead of Getting Things Done (and our house is small with distinct rooms and no line of sight from room to room, so to wash the dishes means to be out of sight to someone in the living room, which is unbearable for him, and that's okay, because he's 15 months old).

Learning about attachment parenting and high-needs children through Dr. Sears and other parenting sources has helped a lot. I'm not the type to subscribe wholeheartedly to any philosophy, parenting or otherwise, and I have a lot to learn, but I have found much reassurance and inspiration from the these communities of parents.

We've also been getting out a lot more. The first year, we were very housebound. I have what I have renamed Attention Disparity Syndrome and on top of that, I am easily overwhelmed, and far more so when I'm sleep-deprived. Some days, just getting the diaper bag together while getting Connor ready to go out the door just as he had a blowout left me nearly in tears. I canceled a lot of appointments over the past year. This past year has been an intense course in just coping with daily life, but I am very proud of how far I've come in being able to plan ahead, anticipate problems, and keep my cool.

I've also - and this is even more important - learned to be gentle with myself, and that helps me be gentle with my son.

I've purchased memberships to the Norfolk Botanical Garden (which has a great kids' play/fountain area called the World of Wonder), the Virginia Children's Museum (which is like a much smaller, calmer version of Philadelphia's Please Touch Museum, where I went as a kid), and the Virginia Aquarium, and I signed up for a local Mom's group. Connor is so busy looking at things when we are out and about when we are out and about that he is much, much mellower than he is at home, and even though keeping an eye on him in the midst of clamor and distractions is harder for me out and about, the overall benefits for both of us make it more than worth it. (One of these days, I might get the take-picture-transfer-to-computer-post-to-blog process streamlined enough to actually blog about these adventures!)

What he doesn't do well yet is play by himself or entertain himself at home. I have just recently started bringing my books or my sketchbook into the living room, and gently encouraging him to play while I draw or read, with mixed results (that usually involve him throwing a ball at me as an invitation to play).

We did move the safety gates in our living room recently to allow him access to the piano (this is not our piano. This is), and that has been AWESOME, even if the piano bench did suffer from an encounter with a harmonica last week. Sometimes we play together and improvise duets, but he loves to go over on his own, and play around on it for a while, and frankly, he's far better than I thought a 15-month-old could be.

When my husband is home, we are busy trying to clean the house, eat dinner, bathe C., and fit in time together. My husband is pretty good about giving me an hour or two most days when he gets home, but I rush to spend that time in the studio, because, after all, I'm trying to be a work-at-home Mom!

I also try to avoid watching any television with him, unless we are both having a melt-down-ish day, and I restrict any computer time in his presence to when he's sitting at his high chair eating. I don't want him to think that's what people do all day, even if someday he has a job where that is what he does all day.

So all of this is to say, I have read VERY few of my favorite blogs in the past 14 months. I've spent most of my online time trying to share my artwork and sharing pictures of C. with friends and family on Facebook. But today, in anticipation of a two-week-trip with Connor which my husband will have to miss, he gave me the day to myself, and I've spent a nice chunk of it browsing Google Reader and Pinterest, which I just joined this week (find me here!).

I am sad to see that a lot of my favorite bloggers have disappeared - even their blogs are just gone - but happy to see that many are still around and sharing their lives. So, I'd like to say:

Get well soon! to Corey...

Congratulations to Melissa and Sara...

Merisi, you are always an inspiration...

Hi, Tinker! ...

... and Bonjour to Anne, who has moved 3,000 miles from Baltimore to Paris!

And hello to all of you who read this blog. I can't promise any sort of regular blog reading or posting from here in the near future, but I will try.

Hide Your OWN Treasure!

2011-09-02T17:22:00.004-04:00

Just in time for International Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19, I am so excited to offer my first pirate map printable coloring page, a treasure map where YOU get to hide the treasure yourself, and add in any details you like!

I've been planning to offer something like this for a long time, and I am very pleased with the way it turned out, and how great the map looks when printed from the PDF. I also had so much fun coloring with crayons for the first time in ages.

It's available in the Interimaginational Institute Etsy shop for purchase as a PDF download (delivered to your email address after purchase).

Perfect for kids, adults, teachers, adventurers, storytellers, doodlers and Talk Like a Pirate Day partiers!

Coming soon... a tutorial on making your own treasure map from scratch, as well as more treasure map and fairy tale map coloring pages. Watch this space! Or this one! Or this one!

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Happiness in Every Direction

2011-08-24T07:08:00.003-04:00

Another of my new Wayfinding series:

Happiness Street Sign, 8" x 10"

You can find prints in my Etsy shop and goods for home and self in the Wayfinding section of my Zazzle shop.

I am so excited about these! I am bursting with ideas for the signs, and just like with my maps, I have many, many more ideas that I have time to draw them.

Happy adventuring!

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Find Your Way to Amazing Things...

2011-08-23T13:18:00.004-04:00

I am so pleased to announce my Wayfinding series of illustrations:

Adventures Street Sign, 8" x 10"

You'll find prints of three different street signs to amazing places in the Wayfinding section of my Etsy shop, and there will be more to come, as well as different sizes, in the near future.

The signs will also be available on all kinds of goods in the Interimaginational Zazzle shop this week.

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The City of Mapperly Love

2011-08-07T08:44:00.002-04:00

Philadelphia, PA, ink and watercolor on paper, 16.667" x 6.25"

This is my entry for They Draw & Travel's recent map contest.

It was my first big map since Connor was born - one of the biggest I've done, actually - and it was good to work under deadline again. I originally hoped to do maps of multiple cities - Philly, Reno, Los Angeles - but in the end, decided to put all my energy and time into one great map, and I'm glad I did.

Of course, I did waste away half of that time and energy moaning over how many of my favorite shops and restaurants have closed since I moved to Virginia. And most of the rest of the time and energy trying to whittle down the list of things to include. It was impossible to include every building or landmark I wanted to - I've always thought of Philadelphia as a small city, but it really isn't, and even just the walkable portions of Center City and Old City (the actual map above) are chock-full of interesting things - so I aimed for a nice balance of cool-looking buildings, historical and personal landmarks, and geographic balance.

I'm very proud of it, and also proud to be part of such a great group of mapmakers. Take a look around They Draw & Travel's site to see amazing maps in every style imaginable!

I may be offering prints of this in my Etsy shop, but in the meantime, you can find large poster versions and other goodies in the Interimaginational Zazzle shop, and They Draw & Travel will also be offering prints on canvas soon.

Tour de Shore Bike Race Map

2011-07-03T17:23:00.003-04:00

I am working on a map of Philadelphia for the They Draw & Travel contest I wrote about today on Cartophilia, and in the process of looking for reference photos, found this map on my hard drive. A friend of mine commissioned it two years ago to commemorate the annual Tour de Shore bike ride from the Irish Pub in Philadelphia, PA, to the Irish Pub in Atlantic City, NJ.

I was uncomfortable with this map while drawing it, and for a long time after, because it was so necessary to include people in it, and I don't draw people very often, so I'm not skilled at them. These bicyclists brought me all sorts of angst, but my client loved them, especially the ones who represent real people, and now that I look at them, I don't think they're that bad. The leprechaun could maybe stand to gain a few pounds (more potatoes! more Guinness!), but for the most part, I am kind of fond of them.

Overall, though, I have always been pleased with this map, and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to create it. If you're in the Philadelphia area, I've been told the original is now framed and hanging in the Irish Pub, although I haven't had the opportunity to see it myself. We'll be heading up there later this summer, so I will make sure that's finally a stop on the agenda.

Sharing the Love of Maps on Cartophilia

2011-07-02T21:25:00.003-04:00

I'm very excited to be a new contributor to the blog Cartophilia: Maps and Map Memorabilia; I just posted my introductory post, featuring, among other things, a map I brought back from Ireland when I was 14.

My Little Traveler, Now Online

2011-06-30T08:07:00.007-04:00

I am delighted to announce that my sketchbook from the 2011 Sketchbook Project has been digitized and is available for your perusal at the Art House Co-Op web site. Go take a look!

I am so thrilled to see it again; there were drawings I had forgotten. Of course, there's a few mistakes I made, that I cringe slightly to see, but more about that in another post. More than the cringing though, I am delighted by the way it turned out, and by the way it forced me to think outside the Etsy shop and try new things. Some of those things have turned into larger art projects currently in progress that I will share with you soon.

The sketchbook is still on tour around the country, along with all the other submitted sketchbooks. You can see them in Chicago from July 14 -17 and in Winter Park, FL, from July 29-31, and of course, after that at the Brooklyn Art Library. My mom went to see the tour in San Francisco and she said the place was standing room only. Now she wants to do a sketchbook for the 2012 Sketchbook Project and sponsor mine as well. It was a lot of work and time out from my other projects, but I think I might take her up on that offer, because a) as I said, it was invigorating and inspiring, and b) next year the world tour is going to Melbourne and London... maybe we'll just have to go visit the books there.

Hmm. That makes me wonder why I don't have a passport for my son (my other little traveler) yet?

More Small Lands to Explore

2011-06-25T13:10:00.005-04:00

Map of Small Land No. 3, 2.5" x 3", ink and watercolor on paper

Map of Small Land No. 4, 3" x 2.5", ink and watercolor on paper

Available with other lands, small and large, in the Interimaginational Institute Etsy shop.

Map studies in ink and watercolor

2011-06-09T09:30:00.006-04:00

I've been heading in a more abstract direction lately, reveling in the watercolor and ink lines of unnamed lands and imaginary countries. I find such joy in the subtleties of shading and tone.

Map Study No. 1, 10" x 8", India ink and watercolor on paper

Map Study No. 2, 10" x 8", India ink and watercolor on paper

Map Study No. 3, 5" x 7", India ink and watercolor on paper.

Pocket Maps of Small Lands

2011-05-19T20:17:00.004-04:00

Map of Small Land No. 1, 3.5" x 2.5", ink and watercolor

Map of Small Land No. 2. 3" x 2.5", ink and watercolor

All Aglow... FAE Team Art

2011-04-26T20:42:00.005-04:00

Thanks to Julie of Mermaiden Creations for including my map of Unnamed Land No. 5 in this lovely, glowing Fantasy Artists of Etsy treasury. To see more work from the FAE team, search Etsy for "faeteam."

Sweet Spring Days

2011-04-16T08:46:00.001-04:00

Connor and I ended up at the Norfolk Botanical Garden earlier this week, by chance, and took a lovely walk on a perfect spring day.

All pictures taken with the Hipstamatic app for iPhone.

In Case of a Government Shutdown.

2011-04-08T11:22:00.005-04:00

This is my professional art blog, so I avoid political discussion here and on my Twitter account as well, but I am going to make an exception right now. Please hear me out.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion about government spending and taxes, and I can accept that your opinion might not be the same as mine (which I am not actually going to detail here).

But here's what I wish everyone realized. The government is not an abstract entity. It is made up of real people with real families who put real money back into the economy.

My husband is in the military. I am a work-at-home mother with an income that is unreliable at best. We rely on his paycheck to pay our bills, and it is suddenly very much in question, not through any fault of his own. Furthermore, even if the government shuts down and he's not getting paid, as a member of the military, my husband will be required to report to work without pay. So he won't be able to go get a second job or stay home with our son so I can go rustle up some emergency short-term job.

There are 2.8 million U.S. federal employees. Whether you think they all deserve their jobs or not is irrelevant to the fact that if they, or even just some of them, suddenly have their pay cut off because of a government shutdown, that is a whole lot of money that will suddenly not be in circulation.

That is, if those people don't get paid, they can't pay their bills, their mortgages, etc. They also can't buy food and discretionary purchases from cars to clothing to vacations. All of the companies and organizations who normally receive portions of that money will suddenly see their revenue drop as well - and that probably means employee layoffs, so those people won't be able to pay their bills too.

Unless you live completely off the grid, all of this will affect you, just as the recession affected us all.

This is very personal. If you feel government spending should change, whether you want the whole government to be bigger or smaller, or one part bigger and another part smaller, you are entitled to your opinions, and I support your right to ask for whatever changes you would like to see, just as I will continue to fight for my own beliefs.

But whatever changes are made, cuts or increases of any sort, they should be made in a responsible, well thought-out and cooperative manner. There are real people behind all this, relying on paychecks, which they have earned, and they and we don't deserve to be held hostage to precipitous whims on either side.

Thank you for your time.

Connor's Island

2011-03-31T11:28:00.003-04:00

I've had my hands full lately, trying to get caught up on both business and personal administrative things. I pretty much abandoned the bookkeeping when Connor was born, but now that taxes are looming, I've been working frantically to catch up.

So since I only have an hour or two to work each day, anyway, I've put most other things on hold, including commissions and new projects. To relax, I've been working on Connor's first map, which I hope to finish and have framed in time for his first birthday in June.

I added a few more things by ink after I shot this photo, but now the inking is done, and this week, I'm painting the ocean.

This painting is one of the largest I've done, at 18" x 24", and not for the first time, I'm learning that I must work more slowly with water than I can on a smaller painting. I generally choose not to stretch my watercolor paper ahead of time, because it changes the texture of the paper in a way that makes ink spread sloppily, and if I stretch the paper after I ink it, then I run the risk of it buckling irreversibly. I guess that's not supposed to happen if you do it, you know, correctly, but it's happened to me. So instead, I usually do a sort of post-stretching, in which I saturate the final painting from the back, sandwich it with absorbent paper or cardboard, and weight it down with heavy books so it dries flat. It might not be proper, but it works beautifully for me. (It helps that I have a lot of large, heavy books. I feel this gives them a chance to earn their keep around here.)

This lack of pre-stretching, though, means that it's easy to over-saturate the unstretched paper while painting, so I must work in smaller portions. It's a good exercise in patience and working slowly and methodically, which is not my usual m.o., especially now that I have so little time on my hands.

I'm anxious to be finished, but I'm very pleased with it, and it is a special process to make something for my own child. I hope he will treasure it as he grows older, and I hope that, in the meantime, it brings him hours of happy adventures through imagination.

Your Undersea Adventure Awaits...

2011-03-27T18:29:00.004-04:00

Have a hankering to go exploring the seven seas? I've listed a bunch of new steampunk-y submarines in the Interimaginational Shop, including these four, and there are a few waiting in the wings...

Submarine No. 13, 2.5" x 3.5", India ink and watercolor

Submarine No. 10, 3.5" x 2.5", India ink and watercolor

Submarine No. 9, 3.5" x 2.5", India ink and watercolor

Submarine No. 12, 3.5" x 2.5", India ink and watercolor

Bon Voyage!

From Here to There...

2011-02-14T14:09:00.005-05:00

From Here to There: A Curious Collection from the Hand Drawn Map Association

I am thrilled to announce that my treasure map of the Isle of Chance is included in this really fun book edited by Kris Harzinski, founder of the Hand Drawn Map Association, one of the coolest sites on the Internet.

You'd Be Home By Now

2011-01-30T14:24:00.004-05:00

The Sketchbook Project turned out, more than I even hoped, to be just what I needed to jumpstart my creativity. Not only has sketching become an integral part of my daily life in a way that it wasn't before (and why not?), but as a result, I am feeling re-energized and am swimming in ideas for new artwork. I plan to have some new pieces up in the Interimaginational shop in the very near future.

Benefits aside, it was a fun project to work on, in and of itself. Here's a sampling from my sketchbook:

I opted to have my sketchbook officially digitized, so the complete book will be available online on one of the official sites (I'll add a link and instructions when I know where to send you), and of course, you can always go visit it at the Brooklyn Art Library or any one of the stops on the nationwide tour (along with 20,000+ of my sketchbook's closest friends!).

(Ahem, I have just realized my sketchbook will be going to Austin during South by Southwest before I do myself...)

Happy New Year!

2010-12-31T16:39:00.002-05:00

I have just written out some very specific resolutions and goals for 2011,
but they can pretty much be summed up like this:

To live joyfully and to dwell in possibilities.

I hope 2011 is a wonderful, magical, happy year for you and yours.

The Mapmakers' Ball

2010-12-12T23:32:00.002-05:00

Sometimes, in a grand room,
somewhere that may or may not be on a map,
the mapmakers meet
and dance and spin the evening away
while they talk of places far and near,
seen and unseen,
secret and known,
and streets with funny names.

You're invited to The Mapmakers' Ball, my latest Etsy treasury.

Treasures for You

2010-11-26T12:10:00.002-05:00

My latest Etsy treasuries...

'Ocean Greens and Sky Blues' by paintandink

An EtsyMom Treasury!

Black Friday - Cyber Monday ... nancywallisdes... $16.75	Dangle Earrings Teal Blue Lu... hotpinkchick $13.50	My Own Golden Lagoon Pendant... paulasstressar... $22.00
Ocean Blue Baby Blanket - Ph... bubblegirlknit... $55.00	Black Friday Limited Edition... LifeSoapSimple $5.20	READY TO SHIP Aqua Green She... neishasblue $6.95
Fused Glass Cuff Links No. ... paulasstressar... $20.00	Blue Chenille Letter 'W&... letterperfectd... $68.00	Shades of Blue Beaded Ponyta... seahorsedesign... $6.00
Flower Hair Pins Bright Teal... hotpinkchick $15.00	The Wedgwood China No. 3 Los... dditta $17.99	Black Friday Sale 10% OFF Ha... jessiemccann $27.00
Listen to the Breezes - 3x4 ... TiffanyTeske $10.00	Chamomile and Lavender Sensi... sassygracebout... $4.00	Green Flower Hair Pins - Set... HandmadeWhimzy $10.50

Generated using Treasury HTML code generator by Whale Shark Websites.

'My, what a tiny tooth you have!' by paintandink

My son's first tooth is poking through, and this tiny tooth has brought a whole lot of uproar to our home, so to commemorate the occasion, here's a collection of EtsyMom Team creations.

The Ultimate New Mother Nurs... stonesofhealin... $30.00	Turquoise Cream Teefer - Too... Artiafora $6.00	One Eye Green Monster Patch jodieflowers $12.00
Natural Maple Teething/Grasp... littlenursling... $7.50	Baby Bib in Dinosaurs birdestudios $8.00	Fangs necklace - vampire tee... cuteandfun $19.00
Paranah- I bite Baby Bodysui... mamamonkey $12.00	T Rex Attack therockingpony $26.00	ON SALE Bib with Crocodile i... zoegirldesigns $8.50
Wooden Reversible Teething o... tarynstuff $	ZARKLE BURP CLOTH / LOVEY twozanyzebras $12.00	Teething Blanket snugglymonkeyc... $5.00
HOLIDAY SALE MONSTER Shirt -... joeyandaleethe... $34.20	Handmade Green Flame Top Plu... TiLTcreations $15.00	Boys Surfer SharkTooth STERL... ButterflyGem $17.00

Generated using Treasury HTML code generator by Whale Shark Websites.

Babyheart

2010-11-15T08:59:00.005-05:00

We are right in the heart of babyhood now.

He doesn't sleep through the night - he wakes sometimes six or seven times. Sometimes only three. Oh, those lucky three-wakeup-nights!

He grins at us when we walk in the room, and the joy makes me go weak at the knees.

He drools like a mad man.

He likes to be high up in the air, like a skydiver looking down.

He has a conehead still, from my very long labor. It is not the typical conehead, formed by his skull plates, but instead is a lump of calcified blood, and it might be permanent, so if he ever wants to go into modeling, he might have to model hats. Chances are, though, that it will go away.

He chews on our fingers, his fingers, my hair, my clothing, his clothing, the clothing I was trying to put in the giveaway pile yesterday, whatever he can reach.

I have not yet learned how to balance all the parts of this new life of ours. I feel dizzily overwhelmed most of the time. It's better if I concentrate on what is, and try to move forward, instead of what used to be, not least because used to be might have included a lot more free time, but it didn't include him, and I can't imagine that.

He is learning to play, although he would still rather be in our arms. And I try to soak that up, even if I sometimes wonder if I will ever get things done again, because I know there will be a time when he doesn't want to be held at all.

Already, the newborn days seem like a dim memory.

That could be from lack of sleep.

He works very hard at rolling over. And he is just learning to sit up, if only when I put him in that position. Rolling over and getting his knees up under his belly are his driving ambition. I hope he can harness that same perseverance and determination throughout his life.

His cheeks are SO pinchable, although I tend to pat them instead, he has just started belly-laughing, and I can't stop kissing his head!

Note: I stole my comment from Corey Amaro's Tongue in Cheek for the basis of this post.

Sending My Sketchbook Into the Blue Yonder

2010-10-23T13:21:00.005-04:00

I've just signed up for the Sketchbook Project. It fell into my frame of attention yesterday, at exactly the right time, and I couldn't help but sign up.

The past few years of mapmaking have been amazing, and I have been so lucky to find a way to earn money doing something I love. But success at self-employment, especially as an artist, brings some dangers, one of which is the pressure to perform. Soon, it feels like every minute of time must be productive - every piece must be good enough to sell. Time for dreaming and sketching gets squeezed and becomes less about dreaming at all and more about planning and performing and producing, even though dreaming made the whole thing possible in the first place.

Don't get me wrong - I am not of the crowd that believes that selling art somehow lessens its value or the artist's purity. I believe art is a valuable and necessary contribution to society, and artists should be compensated appropriately. But signing up for a project where the resulting artwork won't be for sale - and I won't even be keeping it - seems like a perfect exercise in creating art for the joy of creating and sharing that joy.

In this new life of mine, with the arrival of the Mapmaker's Apprentice, my time for planning and performing and producing has been abruptly and drastically cut to pieces. Time for artmaking comes in unpredictable fragments. It's rare that I have the time to work on any large chunk of a project, so if I want to make any art at all, it has to be something I can fit into those little fragments. And after a few months of almost no artmaking, I am wary of jumping right back in where I was. I am very proud of the work I've done, but feel like it's time to step back a bit, and reassess my direction and intention and creativity. Sketching is a beautiful way to do that.

I've put a sketchbook in every room, in my favorite purses and bags, and in the car. And in the process, I'm falling in love with my sketchbooks all over again. My desire to sketch has taken on an intensity that it never had before. My fingers itch for a pen, and my brain is constantly throwing out ideas.

Along comes The Sketchbook Project, and I am sold (and how could I resist, since the two main images are maps). It's open to anyone, so even if you don't think of yourself as an artist, you, too can take part.

Can't wait for my sketchbook to arrive.

Nibs of Steel

2010-10-17T13:40:00.006-04:00

How I love the way the Internet brings me in touch with people far and wide - people who share my sense of humor, my hobbies, my interests, no matter how offbeat, obscure or old-fashioned.

A few months ago, Tracy, a fellow Twitterer, sent me a link to a blog post about her new stash of pen nibs. Treasure! And a generous offer. As soon as I realized she was serious about sharing the wealth, I took her up on the offer.

This week, I finally made it to my post office box (it's amazing how an errand I once ran every other day or so has become a monumental undertaking, now that I have a babe in arms), and found the most delightful little package waiting for me.

I spent yesterday afternoon trying the nibs out, while my husband and son spent the day together. It was my first full studio day (not counting snack breaks and lunch for Connor, which required my presence), and the first time I'd done any inking since the little one arrived. Although I've managed to sneak in some watercolor and sketching in little fragments, inking is more of a commitment. A messy commitment. But it was wonderful to put pen to paper again.

Tracy sent a generous handful of nibs, and among them several different types, including the Banker, the Auditor, the Post Office Pen, an Arts & Drafting nib, and one called the Modern Writing nib, which is one of my favorites.

I love this modern world, but I'm also thrilled by the idea of a world in which each profession had its own pen nib.

To my great amusement and delight, they performed to type: the Banker nib was heavy and authoritative, the Post Office Pen precise and straight, the Auditor nib wrote beautifully, but shredded the paper as it went. The Arts and Modern Writing nibs were the smoothest, but I'm also pretty fond of that Post Office Pen.

I look forward to many hours of artmaking with these pens. Thank you so much, Tracy, for sharing your nibs and making my first adventures back in the studio so much fun!

Of Daydreams and Castles

2010-10-14T12:46:00.003-04:00

I've curated two treasuries on Etsy this week. Now that we don't have to wait for a treasury to open up and we don't have to worry about our treasuries disappearing, it might be a little harder to get views (and apparently the items disappear when they sell), but it's more fun to make them. Happy treasury hunting!

Early Morning Daydreams

Castles in the Air

Inexpressible Love

2010-09-19T10:29:00.001-04:00

From Snow to the Long, Hot Summer.

2010-08-14T12:37:00.010-04:00

Hello...

It's been a long time, but I have a good excuse:

Our son, Connor*, was born at sunrise on June 5, and we've been completely immersed in getting to know him and learning to be parents ever since. It's been exhausting. Confusing. Enchanting. Rewarding.

An adventure like no other.

And now I am slowly emerging from the maternity leave cocoon, at least a little bit, with an eye toward returning to mapmaking. I will be a work-at-home mom, so my schedule is unpredictable, but the plan is that the wee one will spend the mornings with me in the studio and the afternoons with my husband, who has changed jobs and now has significantly more time at home than he used to (which was almost nil). Evenings will be our family time. And somewhere in there, we'll have to squeeze in the housework and the like. (Of course, you know what John Lennon said about plans.)

I don't know that it will be easy, especially because little Connor likes to be held almost all of the time, and I don't think that's a bad thing - I'm becoming a babywearing convert - so I am hesitant just to drop him in the playpen all morning. And it's hard to cozy up to a drafting table with a baby strapped to your chest. But I believe that being a work-at-home artist and mother will be possible and, I hope, even fun. I expect I'll spend most of my time with Connor sketching, brainstorming, and tending to business on the computer, and do the heavy inking and painting when he's with Daddy.

I'm kicking it all off by reopening the Interimaginational Institute on Wednesday, August 18, at 5 p.m. Eastern Time. For now, the inventory will be the stock I have on hand, but I look forward to adding new maps, including some of my smaller framed art, in the coming months. Please do stop by!

And in the meantime, here's to adventures and exploring and new pathways, to art and joy and to all of the treasure in this enchanted life.

An Aqua Sea, 3.5" x 5", India ink and watercolor on paper

* Still occasionally called the Blueberry, although we have promised him we won't call him that in front of his friends.

Snow Day

2010-01-30T20:41:00.002-05:00

And we have snow! Real snow, not flurries on steroids.

I took this photo at 7 a.m. when the neighbors' children woke me up - they were already outside playing. I can't say I blame them - the last real snowfall here was apparently in 2004, and they would have been infants or toddlers back then.

So I heard squealing, then I looked out the window and squealed myself, because I didn't actually believe the forecast yesterday. And then I immediately wished that I had cross-country skis, not that I'd be allowed to use them in my current condition. Pregnant women aren't allowed to do anything. Except eat as much chocolate as we want, which, now that I think about it, almost makes up for everything else. Maybe not skiing.

Gus the Cat spent the day looking out the window, then looking at me, then looking out the window, then looking at me, like, "Do you NOT realize something really weird is going on here? Aren't you going to DO something about it?" Then he ran around the house like a maniac. Finally, at the suggestion of a friend, I brought a bowl of snow in the house and let him check it out. After pawing and sniffing at it for a few minutes, his curiosity was sated, and he has pretty much acted normally ever since.

By the time it got dark, I measured the snow on our patio at 6.5" - not quite the 8" to 12" the forecast predicted, or the big drifts in other places I've lived, but still, a marvelous amount for southeastern Virginia.

I made the most of the day by working on some of my own artwork that I have had on the back burner while working on commissions, and by drinking three cups of hot chocolate.

It's been a good day.

The Unnamed Lands

2010-01-27T20:33:00.004-05:00

I've had a little backlog of finished paintings in the past few months, and I think I've finally caught up on listing them in the shop. These are from my series of Unnamed Lands, which I hope will spark an abundance of imaginative interaction between viewer and map.

Unnamed Land No. 5, 3.5" x 5.5", india ink and watercolor on paper

Unnamed Land No. 4, 7" x 5", india ink and watercolor on paper

Unnamed Land No. 3, 3.5" x 5.5", india ink and watercolor on paper

A Little Wackiness Around Here

2009-12-26T17:38:00.003-05:00

I hope this finds you all well and happy and having celebrated a wonderful holiday season, whichever holidays you celebrate!

I thought it only fair to announce that you may notice some weirdness with my template; I am working on a main, central web site, and somehow my Blogger template affects how my blog is published to said site. So until I get that worked out (the figuring out of which sort of feels like making my way through a maze filled with peanut butter and jelly while blindfolded and wearing scuba fins), this blog might not look pretty.

New Maps and Artwork at the IIFEC

2009-12-13T08:28:00.004-05:00

Treasure on the Golden Sea, 7"x5", ink and watercolor on paper

Scallywag Island, 3.5"x5.5", ink and watercolor on paper

Smithereens Islands, 5"x7", ink and watercolor on paper

The Jewel Thief, 7" x 5", ink and watercolor on paper

Tranquil Island, 5.5"x3.5", ink and watercolor on paper

My Big News, or Why I've Been Absent From Blogging

2009-11-29T10:55:00.005-05:00

I'm expecting.

I've been busy sleeping, eating, buying bigger clothes...did I mention sleeping and eating? Actually, I haven't been sleeping nearly as much as I would like to, but I've been eating plenty. I seem to be one of those women for whom the only cure for morning sickness is to eat more... all the time, actually.

Tomorrow will be 13 weeks, and our baby (aka The Blueberry) is due on June 7.

And I'm already turning around ideas for The Blueberry's first map in my head.

Wild Things Are Beautiful

2009-11-10T12:23:00.007-05:00

"The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been." - Madeleine L'Engle.

We saw Where the Wild Things Are last weekend. I wasn't sure what to expect, but the few expectations I had were low. I heard so many poor reviews before that I am not sure why I insisted on going anyway. After my disappointing boredom with The Time Traveler's Wife, I've decided I'm not obligated to go see movies just because I love the book.

But Where the Wild Things Are? It was stunning. Magical, even, although not in a stardust-and-loveliness, bring-back-the-joy-of-childhood kind of way. There was joy, but more than joy, this movie brought forth the heartache of childhood. And yet, it was magical in the way it coaxed out nine-year-old Alison and said, "I know."

It was not even a movie for kids, really, as much as for people who've survived childhood. It was sometimes difficult to watch. But it was also healing in a way I never dreamed it could be.

Emily of The Black Apple praised the movie's "honest portrayal of the razor-sharp loneliness often involved with being a kid," and I answered in her comments:

... yes. For me, Where the Wild Things Are was a beautiful, poignant depiction of my own childhood, particularly the helpless pain of conflict in a child's home. In the end, I thought it was a deeply sad movie, but a gloriously sad movie that gave me many reasons to be happy, with a very European sensibility and incredible lighting. It wasn't at all what I expected - or indeed, what I think many people wanted - but ultimately, it was so much more. For me, it was soothing.

It's a very particular movie. The movie, by necessity, had to go way beyond the few words of the book. It takes the map laid out by the book, and finds its own way along the same road, but on a different journey. I can understand that many people wouldn't like it or connect with it, and I can even see how it might be hard for people who expected a sweet kid's movie to appreciate the deep, subtle stories woven throughout, highlighted in specific moments, like the way Max's mother looks at him as he sits at the table eating his supper.

But I loved it and am deeply grateful to Spike Jonze for making just the movie I needed.

Around the World, Under Water

2009-10-26T12:52:00.006-04:00

I am greatly honored to announce the 2010 Dolphin Scholarship Foundation Cartoon Calendar, for which I created the cover artwork. My map celebrates the 50th anniversary of both DSF and the world's first submerged circumnavigation, by the nuclear submarine USS TRITON.

The TRITON's route followed closely the same route as Magellan, whose ship, Victoria, you see on the right (the surviving ship, that is). And the gentleman in the upper left hand corner is not Poseidon (Neptune), but his son... Triton.

Also, the banner could/should read USS TRITON (SSRN/SSN 586), but the submarine was an SSRN at the time of the circumnavigation in 1960; it was reclassified in 1961.

U.S. Navy photograph, obtained here.

To learn more about the TRITON, visit here and here.

To order the calendar, which also features a selection of cartoons about submarine life, and to find out more about DSF, which provides scholarships to children of submariners, visit dolphinscholarship.org

Contemporary Art, Historical Inspiration

2009-10-16T17:43:00.007-04:00

I am delighted to announce that a number of my original maps and other paintings will be available at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia shop through December. The paintings include quite a few of both miniature framed paintings and larger matted originals (ranging in size from 3" x 5" to 8" x 10":

Mysteria, 8" x 10", ink and watercolor on paper, matted, $150

It's an Island-Eat-Island World, 2.5" x 3", ink and watercolor on paper, framed, $30

Land of a Thousand Rainbows, 8" x 10", ink and watercolor on paper, matted, $150

Submarine No. 4, 2.5" x 3.5", ink and watercolor on paper, framed, $30

Rascal's Island Treasure Map, 8" x 10", ink and watercolor on paper, matted, $150

Aaaaaaarrrrrrrgh and all that...

2009-09-21T06:23:00.007-04:00

Talk Like a Pirate Day weekend at the Mariners' Museum was fantastic. Among other things, I met some astonishingly beautiful macaws and parrots (including an African grey like Alex), a Jack Sparrow impersonator who was brilliant, and a real paleontologist. I am very excited about meeting a real paleontologist.

I cobbled together pirate garb from my old SCA garb, and I think I did a halfway decent job.

It may not look like much in the photo, but my display is getting better and better. I spent almost all day Friday finishing my tablecloths, which I sewed by hand because I still don't know how to use a sewing machine, even though I own two (and a half). Turns out, the hand-sewn look is a perfect complement to my artwork.

The wrinkled look, not so much, but I haven't figured out yet how to prevent that - I can iron them until I need to turn the house's AC up, and they still get wrecked by the time I get to the event. I don't want to take an iron with me if I can avoid it, so I will have to start experimenting with starches.

In trying to find a way to wrap the newest tablecloth to cover the table ends, I stumbled on the idea of rope and grommets:

Turned out as well as I had hoped, and well worth the pain and finger jabs.

Here are some photos from the Towne Place at Greenbrier show last weekend. The first shot is the "before" shot of the tablecloth above (you'll see that it's too long on the wide ends and too short on the short ends, and why I am especially pleased with the new look in comparison):

The Towne Place show was my first outdoor event with my own tent, and it was very exciting. I have always loved the idea of my own portable, but defined space - I am infatuated with the idea of RVs and boats and tinker wagons - and having my own tent was a thrill for my inner wanderer, even though I only ended up putting up one and a half walls. Just having my own roof gave me a feeling of home.

Initially, I created a sort of hallway, so people could walk in from both directions, and around and through, and keep the flow going, but...

... after the sun started to hit the left side of the tent and heat up my artwork (lesson learned: know which way the sun will move), I moved the tables into an L shape and put up another half wall. I think I like this arrangement better, anyway.

Ultimately, my goal is to create an ambience for the tent that is a total experience - so that when people walk in, they feel that they are walking into a ship-slash-expeditionary camp (a la pirate-slash-Indiana Jones). It's a slow process, and right now, it's mostly in the small details, like my "shipping" crates below, but I definitely feel like I am on the right path.

Next, I will turn my hand to creating bigger displays for hanging artwork and embellishments for the outside of the tent.

I was wary of doing two events so close together, but I am so glad I did. They were so very different from each other, but I learned a lot from each - vending and hawking and selling do not come naturally to me, but I really do like meeting new people and seeing their reactions to my artwork - at least, most of the time - and I am thoroughly enjoying the set design aspect.

Not to mention talking like a pirate, and all that. Aaaarrrrrrrrrrrgh!

Remembering.

2009-09-11T09:57:00.005-04:00

I do remember.

I remember so many things about that day. So many details. I remember, most clearly, the vivid blue of the sky. God, it was a beautiful day that day. It was one of those days where you can't stop grinning, on the walk to work, because it's so beautiful outside. It was one of those days that you can't not notice the weather.

And then, only 20 minutes later and in the hours that followed, I remember the surprise, followed by shock, followed by ever-increasing horror. I was in Philadelphia, south of NYC, north of DC and east of Shanksville. I remember a feeling of panic because it seemed we were surrounded, with no escape. It wasn't distant. We knew people who were right there in the middle of it, and we watched it unfold, minute by minute.

I remember watching footage of New York as a journalist at the Department of Defense reported to the network by telephone. And I remember hearing the plane hit the Pentagon right in the middle of a sentence.

I remember making eye contact with a total stranger outside work, and breaking into tears. I remember how she hugged me. She didn't look like the hugging type.

I remember the firefighters and police who chose to put themselves in that place, because they cared about the lives of strangers. "Cared" doesn't even seem like a strong enough word. That is such an amazing thing to do - even just to take the chance of sacrificing your life for someone else. So I remember and respect the firefighters who survived, too.

And even though I didn't know them - although, like countless people on the East Coast, I know people who did - I remember the other people who died. The people on the planes. The people who were at work - who maybe walked to work grinning like I did, because it was so beautiful outside. The people in the Pentagon. The people who never knew what hit them, and the people on the planes and the higher floors of the World Trade Center, who, knowing there was no way out, called their family members to say good-bye.

I remember the people just like us.

I remember. So many people have ideas about the best kind of memorial. But I think the best way to remember is to live. To really live. To live the kinds of lives we would want people to talk about when we die.

To smile a lot. To laugh a lot. To live with zest. To love our family members as hard as we can, and to forgive them their faults as best we can. To forgive ourselves for our own faults. To truly savor the little, seemingly insignificant moments, like brushing our teeth or pouring a glass of iced tea. To really feel what we are touching, to really taste what we are eating, to really smell the flowers, to really live in the moment. To be kind to strangers, even when they don't return the favor, because they might be having a really bad day. To stop worrying so much. To stop blaming other people so much. To live fully, even in the bad moments. To thank people. To do the things we love and treat ourselves to the things that make us happy. To recognize when things are good and we are happy. To do our best to share that happiness with the world. To share our talents and give back in our own way. To care. To do the things we've always dreamed of doing, because it's now - or maybe never. To follow our dreams.

And most of all, on a really beautiful day, to look up at the sky, and grin, and take a deep breath, and say, "Wow, it's a beautiful day."

And it is, it really is.

Halloweenland

2009-09-09T21:43:00.003-04:00

My latest map. Prints in the shop today; the original will follow after my upcoming events. I am particularly fond of this one.

Halloweenland, 8" x 10", ink and watercolor on paper

How best to celebrate All Hallows Eve? With a trip to Halloweenland, of course. This Halloween map is the perfect guide to this mysterious place: from Spiderweb Crossing to the ghostly Spookville, from the city of Necropolis to the eerie Cauldron Lake, you'll see no end of mysterious, haunting sights, and meet plenty of ghosts, witches, zombies and other creatures of the night.

Take a headless horseback ride along Abracadabra Highway and Zombie Road, or float down the Magic Potion River on a raft steered by unseen spirits. And you'll see some amazing fall foliage while you're at it.

It will be a trip you'll never forget.

A fantastic Halloween decoration, and a perfect gift for any ghost, spirit, witch, goblin, zombie, monster, or fan of Halloween.

For Posterity

2009-09-09T09:48:00.002-04:00

Because it's important to celebrate the little things in life.

And because this makes me laugh.

Happy 09/09/09!

From Rascals to Rainbows

2009-08-08T14:01:00.005-04:00

I know I promised seemingly elusive photographs of my recent trip abroad, and I promise those are still coming! Fifteen hundred photographs means a lot of sorting and batch-renaming, which I have just (finally) learned how to do on a Mac. Just so I can share a select few!

But in the meantime, I haven't been just twiddling my thumbs. I am pleased to offer new originals in the Interimaginational Institute shop (some of these have been available as prints for a few months, but the originals are officially mounted and matted and available for purchase by intrepid travelers of imaginary lands)!

These are some of my favorite maps, yet:

Rascal's Island Treasure Map , 8" x 10", ink and watercolor on paper

Island of the Marooned Parrot, 5" x 7", ink and watercolor on paper

Lands of Magic, 8" x 10", ink and watercolor on paper

Land of a Thousand Rainbows, 8" x 10", ink and watercolor on paper

Midsummer Revelry

2009-07-13T12:17:00.003-04:00

I am sorting through photos today in hopes of posting some UK photos soon -- I took 1400 photos, and all I have to say about that is that a 4GB memory card is a fabulous invention, and I don't feel like I took enough photos.

In the meantime, check out the beautiful artwork on display at the Fantasy Artists of Etsy Midsummer Revelry Exhibition.

I am especially fond of this copper cuff by tangocatgems:

and of this lovely girl (by Cat of Darkling Woods Studio), who happily reminds me of the illustrations in both A Little Princess by Francis Hodgson Burnett and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

En Route, With a Stop to Meet a Horse

2009-06-22T09:35:00.003-04:00

I am en route, with an oh-so-brief stop in New Jersey to celebrate Father's Day with my dad, sister and stepmom, and we had the incredible opportunity to meet a 3-day-old filly on Saturday afternoon (it was pouring at first, hence the grayish cast to a lot of the photos, but let me tell you, this camera is aMAZing!).

How I Will Prove the Existence of the Loch Ness Monster

2009-06-18T14:06:00.004-04:00

So I leave on the first leg of my England-Scotland trip (the leg where I go celebrate Father's Day with my Dad in New Jersey) on Saturday, and in preparation, I have been experimenting with my brand-new, not-really-all-that-shiny-but-still-very-pretty Nikon D40.

Aside from the fact that I was sold on Nikons through years of reading blogs - is it just me, or is this camera pervasive among art/craft bloggers? - the reviews I read before actually making the purchase were glowing. Probably the best reviews I've read for any product I've purchased in a long, long time. Glowing.

It's not hard to see why. The camera makes my front patio look interesting, and this is just pointing and shooting - I haven't yet added the filters (immediately, I promise!) or changed a single setting on the camera, and it's cloudy outside, as you can probably tell.

In fact, it makes grass look interesting. Well, I already find grass interesting. I find everything interesting. Except lima beans.

I keep saying that this trip - which is in support of a family friend, who is graduating from the University of Dundee - is going to be a great research opportunity, but since I managed to kill both of my compact cameras in the past months, I needed some way to actually document my research. You know, so I can take photos of castles, palaces, cottages, fairies, and the Loch Ness Monster.

I was tempted to take it back and trade it for a D60, solely out of megapixel greed (well, and to prevent those naysayers who will say my photo of Nessie is fake), but I've read hundreds of reviews in the past few days, and consensus seems to be that, unless perhaps you're a billboard photographer or make your main living with a digital camera, megapixels don't matter all that much these days. This is the page that convinced me.

I was also convinced by this photo, which may just look like a shoe to you, but in which I can see the texture of my shoe better than I can when I pick it up and hold it up to my face.

Hmm, maybe I should go see the optometrist again. But seriously? If you click on the photo, you'll see what I mean. This camera rocks.

Too bad this guy didn't have it:

FantaSci-tastic!

2009-06-05T12:51:00.002-04:00

I am hurriedly packing new prints, ironing tablecloths, checking my list and getting ready to run errands, so this is just a quick note in the middle of a very, very busy day to let you know that I and my maps will be at FantaSci tomorrow at the Chesapeake Central Library.

This event, when it was held at the Hampton Convention Center in 2007, was my first event ever, and I am excited to be a part of it again this year. I am also delighted that it is returning to the library, where it originated, and free and open to the public this year.

I'll have lots of maps there, including prints of The Land of a Thousand Rainbows:

and Rascal's Island Treasure Map:

and many, many more prints and originals. If you're in the area, please stop by and say hello!

Me at my first FantaSci.

Turn over that little pail and give me a drumroll, please...

2009-06-03T06:56:00.004-04:00

A big thank you to everyone who signed up for my Etsyversary celebration giveaway, and thank you for the wonderful recipe suggestions.

Your names went into my happy new little blue bucket (from the Dollar Spot at Target...I try to not even look in that direction as I walk in the door, but they make it nearly irresistible when they have lovely things like this):

My husband was at work, and the cat doesn't have opposable thumbs, much to his chagrin, so I had to hold the pail out with one head, turn my head, scrunch my eyes closed, and draw out a name with the other hand:

Congratulations, Summer! Wishing you happy travels and many wonderful adventures with your Kingdom of Delight map!
And, while I'm at it, thank you to the three who signed up for part 2 of The Great Book Giveaway...

The winner of these three books is Marissa of Mama Sparkles, and they are on their way to you! I hope these books bring you much joy!

More giveaways coming this summer! These have been great fun for me, and I hope for you too, because I have lots more goodies to give away. I mean, lots and lots and lots.

Etsy-versy-licious!

2009-05-26T14:31:00.004-04:00

It's my third Etsyversary! It's actually a double Etsyversary: the third anniversary of the day I joined Etsy, and the second anniversary of the day I listed my first map. And what an amazing few years it has been.

In celebration, I am offering free worldwide shipping on all prints through 2 p.m. ET (-4 UTC) tomorrow, May 27th (cause I was gone all morning and I am a fan of extended celebrations, anyway).

** ALSO!! JUST FOR YOU!! **

I am offering a giveaway of a print one of my earliest and still most popular maps, Kingdom of Delight (see above). All you have to do is comment here (and leave your email address IN your comment) in the same time period, by 2 p.m. ET tomorrow.

Comment about anything!*

If you'd like additional entries, please feel free to blog or tweet about the contest, or both, and leave another comment with a link to the blog post or tweet.

Thank you for helping me live my dream!

UPDATE (8:44 ET): I forgot to mention, this giveaway is open to anyone in the world (provided your country doesn't have legal restrictions against such giveaways)!

* But if you need suggestions, I would especially love links to quick and easy, tried-and-true recipes for people who don't like to cook, since my personal chef's... er, I mean, my husband's... work schedule is pure madness at the moment, so I'm doing a lot the cooking, and man and woman cannot live on spaghetti and quesadillas alone.

Well, I could, but I never claim to be normal.

Shiny Happy Things

2009-05-23T11:04:00.010-04:00

Almost two month agos, I entered a giveaway at the Etsy Chainmaillers Guild blog and then promptly forgot about it.

It isn't so much that I enter so many giveaways that I can't keep track, because I rarely do. It's just, I'm easily distracted by shiny things* so when I saw the link on Twitter, I followed it, and I voted, because I love to vote. And then I was distracted by other shiny things, and so it goes. This is my life, folks. I am rarely bored.

Then I got an email from Marion of Marion's Dream Works to tell me that I had one won one of her necklaces.

Well. Speaking of shiny things.

This photograph doesn't even begin to do this necklace justice, and neither can I.

It is gorgeous. It is stunning.

In fact, there's only one way to explain how beautiful this necklace is, and that's to admit that, while I had fun browsing the entries in the competition, I don't know that I would ever have purchased a piece of chainmaille jewelry for myself. (I wear so little jewelry and there's a lot of competition out there...)

So I was pleased when Marion emailed me for my address, but, well, then I was distracted again and forgot again. And then, because we were out and about, I finally picked the package up from the post office yesterday, and opened it in the car in the afternoon sun.

WOW.

Between the flexible links and the crystal at the center, this necklace sparkles. It glows. It actually dances in the light.

Argh. I told you words wouldn't be enough. But I tell you, I am in awe. This necklace (another of which can be found here) begs for a black-dress occasion to do it justice.

Thank you so much, Marion. I will wear it with delight.

*As is my husband, which is why "Shiny things," plus a shrug,
is all you need to say to explain why you're not paying attention in our house,
and forgiveness is usually forthcoming.
Incidentally, even my husband, who went with me to the post office,
was oohing and aahing over this necklace.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

2009-05-15T12:24:00.005-04:00

Oh, how I wish I could tell you where I first heard of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet. It really was only a week or two ago, and it was on some cartography blog, or another. It may have been here. But I'm sorry, I can't remember, so can't give proper credit. I wrote the title down on a scrap of paper, and two or three days later, my birthday gift card in hand, walked into a bookstore-that-shall-not-be-named and, not seeing the book anywhere, inquired at the information desk.

And the store manager, who happened to be standing right there, and whom I've seen many times before, but have never seen smile, took my slip of paper out of my hand, turned to her employees, grinned a big grin, waved the paper around in the air and said, "See! What did I tell you!" then turned to me and said, "I just know this book is going to be big."

It is big. It is extra wide, to make room for a delightful assortment of notes and illustrations on the side. And it is big in scope, rambling and bouncing along from Montana to Washington, D.C.

And it's big in... I'm not sure how to say this, exactly... big in possibilities. Books are so often self-contained little worlds, but this story hints at so much more that is never even mentioned. It offers a generally expansive feeling that off the edges of the pages, there are people living their lives who, even though they have nothing to do with this particular story, are still connected to a larger story, of which this is only a part, and if I fell into this book and couldn't get back out, I would still be able to create a full life for myself, because there's a big wide world in there.

T.S. Spivet, an obsessive and nerdy 12-year-old who maps everything in his life and is too mature in the way of really smart kids, somehow manages to flatly and critically describe his surroundings and his family members, even while, almost as if he is unaware of it, he conveys a striking amount of compassion and love for his family. It's that subtle emotion - that humanity - that gives this book its charm, even as T.S. heads out on an inexplicable adventure that left me baffled as often as it left me wanting to jump on a train carrying Winnebagos (although I think I would have had more food with me, since I take a granola bar with me to the grocery store) and go on my own adventure.

Baffling and inexplicable because... well, I think you just have to read it to understand what I mean. This is not a book that can be easily summed up or described. It is far from perfect. It is both enchanting and disconcerting. It isn't tidy. It is often vague. The supporting characters, for all that they are thrown together in unique ways and are clearly supposed to be offbeat, often come across as so eccentric that they come full circle to stereotypical. And I was unsatisfied with the ending, which arrived abruptly and jarringly, and left too many questions unanswered.

But the book is filled with a spirit of discovery that makes even the strangest, the saddest, the most unsettling events that happen as T.S. makes his way through his story seem somehow magical. Add to that the illustrations - intriguing maps and diagrams and charts and little asides that add a final dimension of wonder - and this book, for all its flaws and strengths and humanness, is a true marvel.

UPDATE: Here's a review of the book from the Austin American-Statesman. I completely agree with this review, although I'd add one thing. It's still well worth reading.

Rainbows, Rainbows Everywhere. Plus Butterflies.

2009-05-14T07:33:00.004-04:00

The title for this map has been dancing around in my head for months, and I am so glad to finally present The Land of a Thousand Rainbows.

The Land of a Thousand Rainbows, 8" x 10", ink and watercolor on paper

Love those mountains - they were the first feature in my mind. And wouldn't you love to visit the Candy Forest? Delicious rainbow-colored candy grows right on the trees, and these incredible fruits are completely free of calories and tooth decay! Amazing!

This gemlike creature welcomes all visitors to his beloved country. Those flames aren't vicious at all, just a warm welcome.

The culinary delights of the Land of a Thousand Rainbows (called just "Rainbows" for short, as in, "Oh, yes, we're taking the kids to Rainbows for a weekend getaway) are fabled around the imaginary world, and are served farm fresh from the fields of marvelous crops.

Prints are available in the Interimaginational Institute.

Fortunicity: The Paris of the Magic World

2009-05-06T09:41:00.005-04:00

I present my latest map, the quintessential map for magicians, witches, wizards, sorcerers and sorceresses:

Fortunicity, India ink, gold hued ink, and watercolor on paper, 8" x 10"

Fortunicity is the in place for the crème de la crème of the magic world. It's practically bursting at the seams with enchantment. From the Witches' Quarter to the University of Wonder to the Great Illusory River, you'll see plenty of marvelous things in this metropolis of magic. And you never know which famous magician you'll spot, sipping a latte, or wand-ering* around.

Prints are available at the Interimaginational Institute. (Browse all of my maps at: http://paintandink.etsy.com)

***

Please note, the locations on my maps are invented;
these maps should not be used in navigation,
except in the realms of imagination, storytelling and play.

The copyright for this artwork remains with the artist, Alison Whittington.

* I'm sure you know by now, but I just can't help it. The puns, I mean.

Oh, this bookcase & I should be friends

2009-04-27T15:10:00.006-04:00

I just saw this at the Green Chair Press blog:

Oh, the farmer & the cowman should be friends by Ron Arad

h: 351 cm x w: 570 cm x d: 40 cm / h: 138.2" x w: 224.4" x d: 15.7"

Part of an exhibit of work by Ron Arad at the Timothy Taylor Gallery in London. From the press release:

Perhaps the pivotal point of the exhibition Oh, the farmer & the cowman should be friends is an extraordinary, imposing shelving unit in the shape of the United States of America, colonizing almost an entire wall of the gallery. Constructed jigsaw-like from individual ʻstates' of stainless and Corten steel, it has a powerful, commanding presence, both playful and provocative.

More info on the artist here and this incredible work of art here.

I'm not sure I understand the title of the piece, but I would gladly be friends with this bookcase. It's like it was designed just for me (oh, how I wish). I have enough books to fill it, too, even if the walls of my house aren't high enough to hold it. A girl can still dream. In fact, while I'm dreaming, I'll dream of a house big enough to hold the whole world (at this scale, anyway).

Good Reads

2009-04-26T11:35:00.006-04:00

Through Jeannine of The Other Side of Somewhere, I discovered Goodreads last year, and have slowly been adding the books I have read to my "shelves." If you are already on Goodreads or sign up, go ahead and add me as a friend, because I am always looking for suggestions on what to read next.

Here's my latest read, a book I couldn't recommend more. I had read Octavia Butler's Parable series (also excellent, although I have reread the first many times, but can barely remember the second) and the Xenogenesis series (amazing trilogy - perhaps more interesting for sci-fi fans, but something I would not discourage anyone from reading), but strangely only discovered Kindred this week.

Kindred is the story of a 26-year-old black woman who is abruptly yanked from 1976 Los Angeles to 1800s Maryland to save the life of her ancestor - a white slaveowner. She is repeatedly sucked back into this world, where she must live as a slave, and make choices that she finds appalling, in order to ensure her own future existence.

My review: Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Excellent book. Not happy, but satisfying in the end, and powerful all the way through. Dana's jarring experiences, and the disorientation suffered by Dana and the reader both, as Dana is yanked through time to the 1800s, prove to be highly effective in communicating the inhumanity of slavery, and by extension, all forms of tyranny. Simultaneously, the author manages to convey the humanity of both the enslaver and the enslaved. Should be on everyone's must-read list.

View all my reviews.

After reading such a profoundly serious novel, I wanted to balance it out with a bit of lightheartedness, so I am now reading Tom Robbins's* Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

* It doesn't feel right, but according to Strunk's The Elements of Style, as well as other sources, the appropriate possessive ending to a name ending in "s" is " 's," with some exceptions. Speaking of apostrophes, did you know that there's a name for the use of an apostrophe to make a word plural?

Beautiful Things, Beautiful World

2009-04-24T11:00:00.006-04:00

To be surrounded by beautiful things has much influence on the human creature; to make beautiful things has more.
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It's Etsy Day! Spread the word!

If you'd like to surround yourself with beautiful things, there is no better place to start than Etsy, where you can find an incredible range of talented people making amazing things in a huge diversity of styles. Here are some things from my favorites:

Shop on Etsy, and your purchases can help artists and craftspeople from all over the world heal the global economy back up, one beautiful creation at a time.

And if you like to make beautiful things, you can sell them on Etsy and share your work with the world. Here's more information.

Etsy has changed my life in so many wonderful ways that I cannot quite put them into words, but I can say without reservation that I would not be making the art I do today without Etsy. If you'd like to browse my own artwork, here's a selection of my maps and illustrations:

Happy Shopping, Happy Making, Happy Travels

&

Happy Etsy Day!

They Make Me Want to Shout

2009-04-23T13:38:00.006-04:00

Windows are exciting things around here. This morning, I walked in the studio and saw this:

Those curtains are ivory, not pink, although I'm not sure if they're naturally ivory or just really old. Anyway, I was all like, "Whoa! What giant humoungous massive pink thing is hovering outside my window and taking over the world? My loooooooord." *

I knew the flowers - I think they're azaleas, but I'm from the desert, what do I know? - were starting to bloom, but the past few days were sort of dress rehearsal. This morning, they jumped up and shouted.

And so I just wanted to thank them publicly for their hard work in making the world a better place. Thank you, flowers, thank you.

And if you ever come to my house and wonder why we let the bushes on our property get so overgrown and out of control, this photograph will be my answer.

* I never said "My lord" like that until I moved to the South. I don't think people here actually say that, but it just seems fitting. I have had people tell me, "Bless your heart," though. Which seemed so sweet and nice at the time.

My Great Big Sunshiny Break in the Fog

2009-04-22T13:25:00.005-04:00

I feel like I've hit a roadblock the past few weeks. Like, I was walking along this fantastic, scenic road, and suddenly, I hit a wall of fog, and now I can't see where I'm going.

It's not an absence of ideas. I can't walk without falling over ideas. My brain is a big old tumbler of buildings and castles and roads and names and fairy tale motifs and new worlds and seas and images. Sometimes I feel like I will explode with ideas.

Nope, not an absence of ideas at all. I just feel foggy. Can't see the road. I sit down at the drafting table, paper in front of me, and can't decide how I want this map to look. The ideas are there, but I can't bring them together into the whole.

I want each of my maps to be distinct. I don't want them to all run together. The problem is, when you do the same thing day in, day out, it's way too easy for things to run together, and if my maps start to run together for me, then the viewers are going to have the same experience.

I know in my heart of hearts that mapmaking is what I am supposed to be doing right now. It's one of the most supposed-to-be-doing things I've ever done, and it's not over; I have a long way to go. But the fog is blocking my way. What to do?

Yesterday, I found myself driving through torrential rain interspersed with hail, a storm so blinding that the cars were going five miles an hour, a phenomenon that I assure you I have never seen in Virginia. (I think this place invented blinding sheets of rain and the people who drive here invented the gas pedal. Okay, maybe not. Still.)

So, because I didn't want to die, or, worse, have to call the insurance company, I decided to get off the freeway, and sit out the storm a bit. And by the time I got to the end of the offramp - I am not kidding you - the rain was a mere sprinkle. I glanced in the rearview mirror, and couldn't see the freeway right behind me. And oddly enough, the exit - I couldn't see the sign until I was under it - was a road that leads straight to my house.

In other words, if you can't go through, sometimes the right thing to do is go around, and you find that you end up where you need to be, anyway.

What I needed today was a detour, and a burst of sunshine to clear away my mental fog, and help me find the path again.

So this morning, while browsing some great home decor sites while sipping my morning coffee (we're - or I am - planning renovations, emphasis on the planning part), I realized that many of the photos I was most drawn to were bursting with color and life and almost rollicking fun. I realize this almost every time I browse these sites, actually. And then I try to decorate with non-vibrant colors. Tsk tsk.

Anyway, I decided to try my hand at some artwork for our house.

I saw an exhibit on Fluxus when I lived in Prague, and the pieces I remember most clearly were vibrant and joyous; our instructor told us that a main motivation behind the Fluxus movement was artists (or maybe is) wanting to make their friends laugh. Now, that may or may not be every art historian's summary of Fluxus, but it's exactly that feeling that most appealed to me in those works of art.

So I wanted to paint something joyful today. Wait, that's, let me try that again. I wanted to paint something JOYFUL!!!!!! today.

These watercolors, which I am painting as a set to be hung together, have a way to go; as simple as they are, they're just at the beginning of what I hope they will become (I mean, I still can't decide what color to paint the star background. Orange? Or red?). But they are just what the art doctor ordered. Already, I feel lighter, and happy just to have a paintbrush in my hand.

Ah, yes, sometimes stepping off the path, even just for a few minutes or a day, turns out to be just the right way to go.

(And now, I think I'll take a detour to Starbucks and the library.)

One More Reason the New Windows Were Worth It

2009-04-22T06:14:00.003-04:00

(Aside from the fact that I can open all of the windows in the house in the time it took me to open one of the old windows, and with a quarter of the effort.)

The morning light in our garden window yesterday, filtered through the neighbors' pine trees.

The morning light filtered through my grandmother's Ball jars

(which I rescued from a cardboard box in her garage that said "Old Jars." The fact that she had such a box makes me laugh, because I would too, if my old jars weren't all in the studio.)

Extreme Sheep Art

2009-04-17T13:10:00.007-04:00

My mom sent me this link.
It makes me happy that there are people in the world who take the time to do things like this, advertisement or not.

The Naming of Places is a Difficult Matter. But Also, Funny.

2009-04-17T12:10:00.007-04:00

Naming places – without constantly repeating myself - is one of the most hardest parts of what I do (more difficult than inking a map without trailing my sleeve in the wet ink, which, I assure you, is quite difficult). From the start, I’ve wanted to come up with my own names (so even if my imaginary places might have real-world equivalents, it’s unintentional), but coming up with new and interesting names isn't easy.

But I’m in a refill-the-creative-well phase right now, in need of fresh inspiration, and so I’ve been poring over atlases and books, Google Earth, web sites, every resource I can find, to get a better understanding of place names. I might go blind (have you ever noticed how small the print is in the index of an atlas?), but I’m having a fabulous time on the way, and I haven't even left the United States, yet (researchively speaking).

I was looking for inspiration, and oh, my, have I found it. In fact, no matter how creative I might get with my imaginary places (and I do my best), there are some place names I just cannot beat, just because they’re real. In fact, I’ve decided to incorporate a number of these real places into a new project, but in the meantime, some of them are just too good to keep to myself.

I could wake up every morning in Coffee City, Texas; Coffee Creek, Montana; or Hot Coffee, Mississippi, then head over to Pancake, Texas, for breakfast.

There are quite a few Sandwiches in this country, so if you don't like one kind, you can have another. You could join me in the afternoon for Tea, South Dakota, along with a snack in Cookietown, Oklahoma or on Rock Candy Mountain in Washington.

For dinner, maybe Cheeseville and Chili, both conveniently in Wisconsin. Finish your day with delicious Pie, West Virginia, and maybe some Eggnog, Utah, with a shot of Rum Center, Lousisiana, or Rum Branch, Missouri, which you could enjoy at Drinking Cove in Maine.

Yum Yum!

(Oh, Yum Yum? That’s in Tennessee).

I found a Dilly, Wisconsin, but no Dally. Topsy in Lousiana and Missouri, but no Turvy.

I think it's marvelous that Michigan has both Inkster and Parchment.

Welcome to Poetry, Tx
Originally uploaded by p2wy

There's Poetry, in Texas, and more than one Story, in Wyoming, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Indiana and Mississippi (and of course, there's Fort Story, here in Virginia).

There are many towns named Welcome, but there's also Turnback, Missouri. I don't know about you, but I think I'd take their advice. And who lives in Cranky Corner, Louisiana?

Colorado has both Chance and Last Chance, just in case you need another one. Boost your chances in any one of a few Lucks and Good Lucks. Why not? I mean, Whynot, Mississippi.

View Larger Map

But your luck might not hold out in Swindleville, Lousisiana. Just be on your guard.

There’s more than one Okay. And Enough, Missouri, which I imagine was named by a spouse who was tired of moving around. And there’s a town in Alaska called Unalaska.

There are more body parts than... well, there's a lot of body parts. Various heads, elbows, cheeks, legs, and so on. But as far as I can tell, there's only one Monkey's Eyebrow, where, apparently, the town sign keeps getting stolen.

There are many Devil-ish towns, but also a few Angels. A few Heavens, including Cowboy Heaven and Horse Heaven (plus, you got it, Hog Heaven), and also a few Hells. My favorite is Merry Hell, Mississippi, because if you have to be in Hell, you might as well enjoy it.

And there are a lot of pessimists in this world, but I’m happy to say there must be a lot of optimists, too: there’s not just Mount Joy, Iowa, and Felicity, Ohio, but try a search for “happy” and you get a whole lot of happiness.

It goes on and on and on. Comical Turn, Idaho. Hijinks, Arizona. Spasticville, Kansas. Bugscuffle, Tennessee. Smuttynose Island, Maine. Social Circle, Georgia. There’s not just one Wahoo, but four that I can find.

Plus, there are sad names, haunted names (Woman Hollering Creek, for example, with my thanks to WhyIsTheRumGone), mysterious names and more.

And like I said, that’s just one country. But I have a map to make, so I will let you do some of your own exploring. Wishing you happy travels, as always. (And when you get tired, you can stop at Traveler’s Rest, South Carolina.)

The Guides

Disclaimer: I haven’t double-checked all of these names yet, so I do not guarantee their accuracy, although I have confirmed a few.

Here are my resources:

Rand McNally 2009 Road Atlas (Mine is from 2007)
The funniest and longest list is here: Unusual, bizarre and humorous names of towns in the United States
There’s also this list at Listology.
More place names here: What's in a Name? - Odd Places in America
You can confirm the names at the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (I haven’t found this site to be easily browsable, but it is still a terrific resource.)
If you want to find place names in a specific area, try the USA Place Names Gazetteer
Funny place names at How Stuff Works

As for other books:

I just finished Off the Map: The Curious Histories of Place-Names by Derek Nelson
Have been browsing Why Do They Call It Topeka?: How Places Got Their Names by John W. Pursell. Fewer funny names, but intriguing etymologies of many places in the world
And I haven’t finished Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States (New York Review Books Classics) by George R. Stewart, but it's an entertaining read. The chapter "Of the Last Flourishing" deals specifically with offbeat names.

Lands of Magic, and Their Stories

2009-04-13T17:17:00.003-04:00

Lands of Magic, 8" x 10", india ink and watercolor on paper

This is my newest painting, although there are others coming on its heels. I am so happy with this one. Most of my maps are relatively large scale, in that they show the details close-up, but I am also fond of small scale maps, and the broader mysteries they suggest.

As I draw, I like to think about the borders between the lands, and how they developed. Were they peacefully decided? Or formed by natural barriers, such as mountains or rivers? Or are they contentious? Are there skirmishes or battles? Or active trade?

I like to think about the economies, as well. I imagine the inhabitants on the coast taking their boats out in the early morning to catch fish, and the farmers plowing their fields, and the witches selling a potion or two at a roadside market. I think about the education, the universities, the particular brand of magic or enchantment that is endemic to that place.

I even think about things like the right-of-way access the inland countries do or don't have to the ocean. I think this comes from real-life encounters with places like the Harbor Gateway, a strip of land that connects the bulk of Los Angeles to San Pedro, which was annexed to give L.A. access to the harbor (where I used to row, in college).

And all this time, I think about the people and their cultures. Do the people wear bright clothing or do they go more for practicality? Are they proud of their history? Do they even know their history? What do they eat? What are their holidays and celebrations? What stories do they tell? How did they get to this place and why do they call it what they do? How did, for example, the name Alluria come to be? What makes them happy?

Most of the worldbuilding that goes on in my head isn't expressed directly on my maps, and that's fine. I like that they offer an interactive experience; I want viewers to be able to tell their own stories from my maps.

Still, I do plan to write some guidebooks to these lands, for the discerning traveler, in the future.

In the meantime, prints of this map will soon be up in my shop. Wishing you happy travels!

Crafting it Forward, Spreading Joy

2009-04-09T13:37:00.009-04:00

(The nice, crisp, clear photo is Sarah's...)

I was lucky enough to sign up for Sarah Kelley's ingenious "Craft it Forward" on Facebook, in which participants sign up to receive, and in turn to offer, individual creative works.

Sarah (you may also know her as thebeadedlily) took my favorite color combination of blue and green, and turned it into this magical bangle: straightforward, yet mysterious; friendly, yet serene; simple, but unique; confident, but not brash. I felt a remarkable bond to the bracelet the minute I opened the package, and now, as I write this, I see how this bracelet has exactly the qualities I wish for myself, and if it is even possible, I love it even more. It's my new talisman.

(...and the blurry, backlit one is mine, taken with
a camera phone, but, hey, at least it's in natural light.)

And now, Sarah is offering it in her shop, so if you like, you can have one of your own.

As for Craft it Forward, it's an enchanting way to make connections through making art, and to bring out everyone's creativity, whether they are frequent crafters/artists, or not. There's no obligation that the people who are frequent artists stick to their usual media or methods, either, so it offers a fun way to explore a new direction or try a new idea.

I am Crafting it Forward on a sort of focus group of family and friends first - or will be as soon as I get the taxes done - but if that goes well, I plan to share it here on the blog, as well. There's no reason why you have to wait for me, though, if you want to start right away. Here are the rules - just copy and paste them on your own blog, and have fun!

The first five people to respond to this will get something handmade by me. There are some restrictions, though:

- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make.
- What I create will be just for you.
- You'll receive it this year (2009).
- You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a mix CD. It may be a poem I may crochet or sew or glue something. I might bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows?

And in return, all you need to do is post this text into a note of your own and make 5 things for 5 people. Respond in the comments section... first 5 people win!

(These rules are just for reference right now, but as soon as I am able to, I will post these rules officially so we can Craft it Forward together. That doesn't mean you can't leave a comment just to say hi though, because comments? They make my day.)

The Great Book Giveaway, Part II, Begins!

2009-04-08T16:34:00.003-04:00

A big thank-you to everyone who signed up for the Great Book Giveaway, Part I!

The spring cleaning continues, and I am discovering powers I never knew I had.

Powers to carefully cull my enormous craft/art book library, to create space in the studio. I never thought I would willingly part with any of my books, but I have so many that I am not able to use any of them to their full potential, or even peruse them for inspiration and eye candy as often as they deserve.

It's actually almost embarrassing how many craft/art books I have. I think others may put them to better use, and thus, I offer them up for the winning. I can't say the book-giving-away is easy, but it's fun, and it makes me happy to think of these books finding new people to love them.

And thus begins the Great Book Giveaway, Part II. This batch includes three more books:

Feeling at Home by Alexandra Stoddard, a fine living genius, and a lovely person, as well. This book is mostly text, so I have only a photo of the cover to show.

Two-Hour Scrap Crafts by Anita Louise Crane. I would call the project examples a cross between Victorian and Shabby Chic, but the ideas are flexible enough to be useful inspiration for any style of decorating.

And finally, The Art of Paper Collage by Susan Pickering Rothanel.

The author's work is lovely (I especially love this ethereal rainbow collage)...

...but the book also has a gallery in the back, featuring a terrific variety of collage work from other artists.

This giveaway I am going to leave open for two weeks, until April 22. To enter, just leave a comment below, including your email address so I can reach you if you are the winner (unless you'd prefer to send your email address to my gmail account (paintandink), in which case, please do still leave a comment). Again, sadly, my budget is such and postage of heavy objects is such that I must limit the giveaway to entrants in the U.S. But even if you live on Mars, I still love you.

Thanks for playing, everyone!

Three is a Magic Number. You're Magic Too.

2009-04-06T16:07:00.005-04:00

Today is my three-year blogging anniversary. Three years - that's like, ancient, in blogging years, isn't it?

Those three years have seen me jumping around quite a bit, from one blog to another to another. And then back to this one, the first one, in which I have brought all of my blogs together to be one strong whole. I think.

I would like to write about something meaningful and inspired to mark the occasion. But wait, that's you!

No, please don't groan. No one blogs for him- or herself. I write in my journal for myself*, but blogging is all about people.

You, readers, who have never met me in person but pop in to say hello. You, my favorite bloggers, who share yourselves on your own blogs, and in doing so, pave the way for me to give back a little bit of myself. You, my fellow artists, who have encouraged me every step of the way, and without whom, there is no way I would be doing what I am doing.

And you, all my friends, around the world, who have made me feel entirely at home in an incredible community that is both larger and more personal than I could have imagined. Some of you, I have met. Some, I haven't. But you all mean the world to me.

Thank you for making it all, well, so magical.

I look back and marvel at how I arrived at this point, and so I thought you might like a little road map of sorts:

The first blog I ever read regularly was Looka!**, which I found right after I was introduced to Wilco, sometime in 2002. I am sad to say I haven't read his blog in years, but now that I mention it, maybe it's time to visit again.

I am not quite sure how I made the leap from there, but I started reading Dooce, Neil Gaiman's Journal and Making Light all at almost the same time, and read them frequently enough to qualify as slightly obsessive, but not quite enough to be stalkerish (I hope) for two or three years.

After I married and moved to Virginia, I discovered the world of craft and art blogs, especially the amazing Violette Clarke, who has built a community of artists with her blog; Posie Gets Cozy; and Emily Martin's Inside a Black Apple.

And Emily's blog, which I started reading at the beginning of 2006, apparently not long after she started it, led me to Etsy. Without any real idea of what I would sell or how to go about it, I signed up for a shop immediately, and, although it was exactly a year before I started selling my maps, that little step was the first in this unforgettable journey into a whole new world.

And I know I've said this before (like three or four paragraphs ago, but also in previous posts), and I don't want to drive you crazy by being maudlin, but I'd like to say thank you again, not just to Emily, and not just to the bloggers I've mentioned here, but to all of the bloggers who have put up signposts or offered directions along the way. And especially to you. For making it worth it.

* Well, and for my children, grandchildren, and my biographers, but for now, those journals are for me alone.

** I'd like to point out, as a matter of pride, that I might only have been blogging for three years, but started reading blogs when people still called them weblogs.

PPS: Regarding the title of this post: I never watched Schoolhouse Roc k as a kid -- so deprived! -- so I didn't even know there was a song by that title. I was thinking more along the lines of the significance of the number 3 in fairy tales, folklore and spiritual traditions.

And the winner is...

2009-04-06T14:17:00.002-04:00

Hi!

(I couldn't resist. I will never be able to resist things like this.)

After a few delays, this morning, it was finally time to choose the winner of the Great Book Giveaway, Part I, so I pulled out an old tin...

...which once held chocolate-chip cookies. Very, very good chocolate-chip cookies...

I popped the names in there, shook it up very thoroughly (they thought we were having thunderstorms here today, but really, it was me shaking the tin for the drawing), and drew out the name of the winner...

Ta-da! Congratulations, silveredfern (aka M Debello)! If you did not receive my email today, just send your mailing address to me at paintandink at gmail dot com, and I will send your books shortly! I hope they bring much joy and inspiration to your students.

Thank you for playing along, everyone! The next book giveaway is ready to go, with a collage book, a crafting book, and a book by the incredible Alexandra Stoddard, so watch this space...

The Great Book Giveaway results...

2009-04-02T11:23:00.002-04:00

... will be announced very soon! Sorry to keep you hanging, but today I am off to traipse around Hampton Roads with a friend of mine, and take photos of a Flat Stanley doll for the daughter of another friend.

Thank you all so much for your entries and comments, and keep your eyes peeled for the Great Book Giveaway, Part II. The pile of art books is growing bigger and bigger, thanks to the spring cleaning frenzy that has hit the Whittington household with unprecedented strength.

Erase the Shame of Infection

2009-03-27T13:00:00.004-04:00

If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that I've been pretty sick this week, knocked off my feet by a shadowy and anonymous illness that seems to have attacked everyone I know in southeastern Virginia.

Now that I am feeling a bit better, I'd like to draw your attention to a related subject. Infectious diseases, by their nature, can be very scary and frightening things, leading to the shunning of their victims, who are often isolated and quarantined. I feel that it's important, in our society, that we remove the shame and stigma from certain near-unavoidable conditions.

Such as the Travel Bug.

The Travel Channel has put together a public service announcement to help bring awareness to this common affliction, but unfortunately, the PSA is so new, it's not up yet on their YouTube channel.

Still, if you feel you've been infected, you can take a step toward the treatment you need by visiting this site - ihavethebug.com - to answer a few questions and undergo a proper examination. The result will be a more tailored diagnosis, such as this one:

Best of luck to you. And remember, there's no shame in admitting that you're infected. It could happen to anyone.

In Ireland, You Believe in Magic

2009-03-17T13:49:00.005-04:00

When I was 13, my Dad called me on Saint Patrick's Day, from a business trip to Ireland, to ask me if I also wanted to visit Ireland, the next year.

Well, of course! I'd wanted to go to Ireland, like, forever. The first time I decided I wanted to go to Ireland, it was because I heard a ghost story. (Lucky you, I found that ghost story for you to read, here, although I don't recommend it if you have to ride in a lot of elevators).

Now, I hate ghost stories. I don't react well to them - I grew up with nightmares and night terrors (although I'm finally starting to develop a taste for ghost stories at about the same pace that I'm developing a taste for spicy food: slowly, very slowly, but noticeable, nonetheless).

So it is strange that, at a time when I regularly woke up frozen with fear after a scary dream, such a story would make me want to go to Ireland, but I think it was the fact that the story was so interesting - and interesting it is, undeniably - combined with a few other things, especially the fact that I was just at that age where I was figuring out my identity, and my family history and Irish heritage seemed to be a crucial part of that.

Regardless of how it happened, I fell in love with Ireland, deeply, passionately in love, long before I ever arrived. And I was not disappointed.

Ireland is a place where you can believe in magic.

This past Thanksgiving, my Great-Aunt Anne informed me and my mother that my Nana's insistence that she was almost 100 percent Irish (making my Mom, with two Irish parents, also almost 100 percent Irish, and me almost half Irish) was not the truth. That Nana and her siblings, including Aunt Anne, were, in fact, only about 50 percent Irish. Maybe a little more. This makes me not half Irish, but just a bit more than one-quarter Irish.

In fact... even the "almost" part, the part that wasn't Irish, wasn't completely true, either. Aunt Anne insisted we do not have any Native American heritage, either, which was also disappointing to me, because I always envisioned my ancestors traveling all the way around the globe, in opposite directions and meeting here in North America. (She did say that the the family legend that we are descended from Charles Carroll of Carrollton is true. Whew. My whole imagined bloodline did not come crashing completely around my feet.)

But just as we discovered that we're not as Irish as we thought, she added that we're actually part French, and also Spanish, being descendants of Queen Isabella and, I assume, Ferdinand. This is fascinating for so many reasons, not least because nobody expects to find out their great-great grandmother was responsible for the Spanish Inquisition, and because it adds a whole new dimension to watching The Tudors. I mean, dude, that's my aunt. Treat her with respect!

But does it mean I'm a princess? Hee. I can deal. I've already got some practice hanging around castles, see:

I do not, nor have I ever had, any skill in dressing like a princess, however, as evidenced by this photo. That shirt, I think, had mathematical symbols on it. Not princessly at all. I think the actual term is bluestocking. Fitting, as you can see.

I was beyond nerdy at 14. I still am, in many ways, although I'm much more comfortable with it now. Sometimes proud of it. But at 14, just about to enter high school, it was an excruciating part of my existence: the fact that I was good in school, that I loved to read - no, had to read, that I loved stories of fairies and kings and queens and leprechauns and green hills far from the dry, dry desert of Nevada. This was not how I thought I was supposed to be, but I couldn't not be that way. It was who I was. And am.

And in Ireland, I found a place where it was okay to like those stories. And even believe them. I felt like I had found a place where I fit in.

So, half Irish, or quarter Irish, full Irish, or not Irish at all, it doesn't matter.

It's the magic that matters.

On this 21st anniversary of that wonderful phone call, let me wish you a very happy St. Patrick's Day. May you always find places that feel like home. May the luck of the Irish be with you.

And may you never stop believing in magic.

(And hey, Dad? Thanks!)

Illustration Friday: Legendary

2009-03-13T11:40:00.007-04:00

Lands of Splendor, 5" x 7", ink and watercolor

I have subscribed to Illustration Friday for two or three years now, but this is my first submission. The topic is "legendary" - how could I not participate this time? (I'm still kicking myself for not participating in the "Tales and Legends" theme last January.)

In fact, I have so many maps and illustrations that fit this topic that I had a hard time deciding, but I finally settled on this one for two reasons: I am pretty sure I've never featured it on this blog, although it made a brief appearance during its creation, here, and I think it fits the topic in more ways than one.

Happy travels, and happy Friday the 13th (may it be a lucky day for you)!

Aye, ye Scurvy Rascal!

2009-03-12T12:51:00.002-04:00

Rascal's Island Treasure Map, 8" x 10"

I have been working hard on new maps, and this is the first of a few that will be listed over the coming weeks. The print is up in the shop now, and the original will be up very soon, after I've matted it.

I am striving to tell stories with my maps, and I am pleased with this map, not just as a painting, but as a story as well.

Happy treasure-hunting!

The Great Book Giveaway

2009-03-10T08:14:00.002-04:00

Actually, this is just the start of the Great Book Giveaway, which is a fancy and more efficient name for the "Alison Needs Space on the Studio Shelves so She Must Part With Some of her Eight Million Books" Giveaway, and may or not be so great: right now, there are just 13 books in the giveaway pile, which I've put together in a few batches, but there may be more (I didn't say this would be easy for me!).

And since most of them are books I acquired while working on a how-to show, what better time to start the Giveaway than National Craft Month? This first batch of books, all three of which will go to one lucky winner, might look like decorating books, but are packed with crafty projects.

Print Magic: The Complete Guide to Decorative Printing Techniques
by Jocasta Innes & Stewart Walton

From Print Magic

Simple Trompe L'Oeil: 20 Stylish Projects Using Stencils and Faux Finishes
by Mary McCarthy

From Simple Trompe L'Oeil

The 30-Minute Decorator
by Eaglemoss Publications

From The 30-Minute Decorator

So enter a comment below and I will randomly select a winner for this first batch (and because I always miss giveaways, because I am always behind in my blog-reading, I'm going to leave the entries open until the end of the month - that is, 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on March 31).

Blogger won't send me your email address, so please leave it in the body of your comment, or if you prefer, send it to my gmail account (paintandink), so I can reach you if you are the winner.

Also, I know that so many of you, my blogging friends, live outside of the United States, but unfortunately, because of the prohibitive cost of shipping books internationally, I have to limit the book giveaway to the U.S. I'm sorry! But I plan giveaways of lighter things in the future, so you will be included at some point, I promise.

And in the meantime, everyone, happy crafting, decorating and artmaking!

Summer at the End of Winter

2009-03-08T17:25:00.002-04:00

What stops me from posting so often is the time involved in creating or transferring images to my blog, so let me tell you about this day with words alone.

It is a beautiful, glorious day here in southeastern Virginia.

The sun is getting low in the sky, but thanks to Daylight Savings Time, it is still far from dark. (How I love Daylight Savings Time. Almost as much as I love cinnamon and chocolate.)

I rolled over in bed this morning and marveled at the sun coming through the neighbors' pine trees. (Does this tell you that I slept in? Well, so did the sun...)

The birds are singing, and they don't sound nearly as crazy as they did a week ago, or will again in a few days. Same birds, I imagine, but now they sound a little smug instead of a little out of place.

There is a warm breeze washing over my bare arms.

I read on the couch this morning, with that same breeze blowing in through every window in the house (days like this, I don't regret the exorbitant amount of money we spent on new windows, because I can open them all in the time I used to struggle with one), and I heard a lawnmower going. Such contentment, I have not felt in a long time. Although I cannot imagine what those people could have possibly been mowing.

Later, I sat at the drawing table next to another open window, painting some new maps, while I drank in the breeze like water, and Gus the cat joined me in the studio, and sat in the other open window.

Now, I am sitting at our patio table - I hauled out the umbrella this afternoon -- and am basking in gratitude that this reminder of what a day can be came just in time, on exactly a day when I really, really needed it. And also, gratitude that Al made me promise that I would sit outside today, since he has to be at work and I have a tendency to forget to enjoy good weather.

But today, I am savoring every minute of it.

So if you are somewhere where it is cold today, or rainy, or even too hot to enjoy the day, I am cupping this lovely summer breeze in my hands, and holding it out to you. Enjoy.

Just When I Thought I Didn't Travel Much Anymore...

2009-03-05T16:41:00.003-05:00

... well, I still don't travel much, compared to my 20s, when I traveled so much for work I stopped getting jet lag. And not only that, but I never quite knew where I was when I woke up each morning.

No, now I get jet lag without even leaving the city limits. Sad, sad, sad.

But my mom is picking up my slack, and, having just returned from Buenos Aires, is now planning a trip to London and Dundee, Scotland, and has invited me along (just for the record, she invited me to go to Buenos Aires too, but it wasn't the right time, so maybe next year, because she has the travel bug, bad, and I sure hope she has signed up for frequent flier miles, and by the way, did I mention that she just got her passport? Bravo, Mom!).

Photo courtesy of PDPhoto.org

Anyway, back to your chief mapmaker's next expedition. It's a trip that actually revolves around an event for a friend of my mother's; the event will be in Dundee, but we will start out for two days in London, then take the train up to Dundee, then wrap up the trip, most likely, with jaunts to Loch Ness and Edinburgh.

I have been to these places before, except for Dundee, but only briefly, so I've seen the super-touristy things, but not much else, and Mom has not even seen those, so we'll probably go see them again.

Photo courtesy of PDPhoto.org

But even though we probably won't be left with much extra time, we're still looking for must-see recommendations, especially places that are easy to get to, but still off the beaten path.

We both like bookstores, live music, and yummy food. We're not big into shopping, unless it's for unusual, offbeat things. And I, obviously, am crazy about maps and historical sites and museums and mythology and things-that-might-or-might-not-exist and most definitely castles, although I am not so much into dungeons.

We would welcome suggestions, and offer our gratitude in advance.

Map from 1653 edition of John Norden's 'Speculum Britainiae'

Fairy-Tale Land Souvenir Stand

2009-02-26T12:30:00.010-05:00

I am delighted to announce that the Interimaginational Institute's Zazzle shop is finally getting a little meat on its bones!

Come on in, and take home the perfect souvenir of your fairy-tale travels.

Now you can find, for example, the Sea Monster Breath coffee mug (he doesn't mind if you have coffee breath):

Or, if you'd like a larger size poster of the Land of Many Tales map to aid you in your exploration of the imagination, you can find it here, too:

And you can write home with stories of your latest journey through the Realm of Unicornia:

Many more goodies are in the shop, and in the works. And in the meantime, the Interimaginational Institute for Fantastical Exploration & Cartography thanks you for your support.

To the Caribbean and Back Without Leaving the Studio

2009-02-24T13:47:00.006-05:00

Dominica: The Nature Island

My most recent commission. Ink and watercolor, 15" x 15"

The Caribbean island of Dominica, not to be confused with the Dominican Republic, is also one of the most undeveloped Caribbean islands, and thus provided a perfect backdrop for the Pirates of the Caribbean films.

dreamworld: what I saw on my way to the city

2009-02-11T11:18:00.004-05:00

I acquired* an Etsy treasury this morning. I planned to call it "worldbuilding" and make a visual map of sorts, but as is the way of things, it took on a life of its own, with a title of its own, and turned into a more of a story than a map. But one reads a map and one goes through a story, so they are, after all, related. I hope you enjoy this one.

* Ah, "acquired." So much more elegant than "snagged," don't you think? What do you mean, pretentious? Well, I can be pretentious if I want, because I balance it out with jeans and cowboy boots and drinking wine out of orange juice glasses.

Nana's 26th, I mean, 85th birthday...

2009-02-06T12:34:00.003-05:00

Today would have been my Nana's 85th birthday, and even though I can't call her (I keep reaching to pick up the telephone), I would like to wish her a Happy Birthday.

For a long time, I believed her when she told me she was 26.

I am glad I can still hear her voice in my head.

Cherry-Picking Finale: This Should Do, For a While.

2009-02-04T13:35:00.004-05:00

If this doesn't cover everything you ever wanted to know about me, well, hey, just ask.

1. I’d rather drive a manual transmission than an automatic, any day. I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t feel the same way.
2. I am a Mac AND a PC.
3. The older I get, the more I like avocados.
4. I’ve had a lifelong dream of getting a pilot’s license. I don’t pursue it because of the expense. At least, that’s my excuse.
5. I believe completely in the power of positive thinking, no matter how trite it sounds. Every time I have ever said firmly, “I will do [such and such activity] someday,” doors have opened, paths have cleared, I have ended up doing it, sometimes long after I forgot I ever made the statement. (This includes moving to Prague four years after I said I would.) So positive thinking works for me.
6. I lived for a year in the former East Germany just after the reunification. I was 16 and spoke no German. I had to learn quickly, because Russian was the second language taught at all the schools up until just before I arrived, so I only knew two people in the whole city who spoke fluent English. I am embarrassed that I no longer speak fluent German (but writing this prompted me to download some podcasts in German, French, Spanish and Arabic).
7. I had to attend English class in Germany, because it was required. The teacher was very critical of my American English and made a point of correcting me on a regular basis.
8. Going to Germany was the best thing I ever did for myself, other than marry my husband.
9. I still believe that I will learn every major language some day.
10. I still believe that I will visit every country in the world.
11. I don’t like to talk on the telephone. I mean, really don’t like it.
12. But I love my iPhone.
13. I think fondly of most of the people I’ve ever known and as much as I try to hold grudges, I have a hard time doing it. (Except for that English teacher in Germany.)
14. I think this is because I have a bad memory and can’t remember why I was angry.
15. I think my bad memory is good for my marriage because I can’t stay mad. On the other hand, my bad memory drives my husband nuts sometimes.
16. I never in a million years envisioned the career path I am on – as a mapmaker and artist – but now I look back and it seems almost inevitable.
17. I am starting to think of myself as a “real” artist.
18. I am intensely grateful to Al for making it possible, literally and figuratively, for me to follow a career path I love.
19. I have clinical depression, in “partial remission.” In spite of that depression, I am an optimist, find lots of good in the world, and consider myself to be reasonably happy. I’ve always felt that something wonderful was waiting around the corner, and I believe that the meaning of life is to find and create joy.
20. I miss California every single day.
21. I believe in God but consider myself agnostic. I don’t see this as a contradiction.
22. I am inclined to take things at face value, and generally give people the benefit of the doubt.
23. I have flown more than 550,000 miles in my life. In fact, 60,000 in one year, thanks to Wedding Story (25,000 of that was on one episode, though).
24. I love seeing the world, but I have done so much traveling in my life that I am beginning to become a really dedicated homebody.
25. I still regret not staying in Prague for a few more years.
26. I hate the concept of “working out” and believe exercise is best worked into daily life by doing cool stuff. Still, easier said than done, and it’s a moot point right now since I have obligated myself to take up running.
27. I like, no I mean REALLY like, bright colors. But I wear mostly brown.
28. I wear cowboy boots almost every day. But as I type this, I’m wearing black Mary Janes.
29. Every day I consider becoming a vegetarian.
30. My favorite time of day is “golden hour.” Isn’t it everyone’s?
31. I think birds are weird. It makes complete sense to me that they are descended from dinosaurs. But I love parrots.
32. I have a really flexible sense of time, and can get totally lost in what I’m doing.
33. But am usually pretty good at telling you what time it is without a watch if you ask me directly.
34. I am a terrible gift-giver, not because I can’t pick out good things but because holidays always sneak up on me. Like I said, flexible sense of time.
35. I like Air Supply. There, I said it. And a lot of other cheesy music, too. And I also love a lot of truly great music.
36. In spite of the fact that I love a lot of “embarrassing” music, and music from almost every genre, I am actually very, very, very picky about what I listen to.
37. I’m scared of the dark. But I’m not ashamed of that. I think my ancestors probably had good reason to be afraid of the dark and the scary things out there.
38. I am a packrat for two reasons 1) I have a bad memory, so my memorabilia ARE my memory or 2) I might need “it” someday.
39. Actually, there was a third reason for a long time. 3) It might be a collector’s item someday.
40. But I am pretty much moving past that. I don’t have space for collector’s items.
41. I am head over heels for chocolate, but I think cinnamon is actually replacing chocolate as my favorite flavor. Don’t tell chocolate.
42. I am a textbook INTJ. Which means I really don’t want to rule the world, but I would if I had to.
43. It also means I really like to be alone. But I don’t think of myself as antisocial. I like being around people, but I hate to be the center of attention, and I recharge best at home.
44. I have a terrible habit of putting my foot in my mouth. This is why I love socializing on the internet. I can proof what I type.
45. If I were going to totally reinvent my personal style, I would be a mix of goth, rockabilly, and Victorian steampunk, with lots of lace and both dark and bright colors.
46. I’d also get a lot more tattoos. I probably will, anyway.
47. I am a member of Mensa, the ACLU, the Smithsonian, National Geographic and Barnes & Noble. And those are just the cards I carry with me.
48. I absolutely love playing six degrees of separation with celebrities’ names, but when I realized that a great majority of the people I know and love are in film/tv/journalism/just live in L.A. Between all of friends and my father, I think am two degrees from everyone in the world. All you have to do to confirm this is read the 25 Things notes of all my friends.
49. I have written a novel. It’s a terrible novel, but I feel like your first novel should be awful, so you can get it out of the way.
50. If I had a sous chef, I would cook more often, but as it is, I hate food prep, and the whole needing-to-pay-attention-to-more-than-one-thing-at-a-time part, so I don’t cook. Lucky for me, Al does, and very well, too.
51. I like baking, though.
52. I also like hyphens and ellipses. This has nothing to do with baking.
53. If I lived in a snowbound climate, I’m not sure I’d ever shovel snow… I’d just stock up on food and hot chocolate and books and art supplies and plan to be happily housebound.
54. I never missed snow in California, but now that I live in a climate that teases us with flurries, I do wish for real snow.
55. I am constantly making up fictional stories and little dramas in my head. When I was about 5, I pretended I had a twin brother named Christopher.
56. But I don’t think I ever had a true “imaginary friend.”
57. For most of high school and college, I wanted to be a spy. But I think I would have been a terrible spy because I would forget my cover story.
58. My majors in college were international relations and print journalism.
59. I really pictured myself joining the Foreign Service. I decided to become a journalist, instead of a diplomat, because I didn’t want to wear pantyhose to work. On such little things, the future of the world changes (or so I flatter myself).
60. I smoked for more than a decade. I don’t regret having been a smoker, but I wish I had quit sooner. I am so glad I don’t anymore.
61. I am grateful that my family didn’t harass me about my smoking.
62. I am crazy about baseball.
63. I really don’t know all the rules, and can never remember the names of the players, but I don’t care.
64. I own about 1,500 books. I’ve read most of them. But not all.
65. I feel the same way about nonfiction books that I do about watching football: it can be great fun, but I don’t seek it out. Unless it’s USC football, but that’s different. That’s religion.
66. I hate trackpads and would prefer a mouse any day.
67. I used to be really into photography. I still enjoy it, but it’s not my driving passion. I do love looking at other people’s photographs, though.
68. I hate clothes shopping, because I hate the hassle and time it takes to try on clothes.
69. I get strong food cravings. I usually crave textures more than specific foods – creamy, firm, crunchy - but that pretty much means I crave cupcake frosting, Dove chocolate and tortilla chips. I wish it meant yogurt, apples and celery.
70. I miss living in Europe very much. I really miss, for some reason, the twisting, tiny alleyways in old European cities.
71. I miss living in a walkable city.
72. I am not a salad person. I love vegetables. Just not lettuce.
73. Even though I don’t play it often, my piano occupies a very special place in my heart.
74. I am terrified of having children. But I’m also kind of excited, and pretty much as ready as I’ll ever be. When the time comes, of course.
75. I would like to have twins. Two sets. Like the Bobbsey Twins.
76. I would really like to go on a hot-air balloon ride.
77. I miss being in an academic environment.
78. I have every intention of sailing around the world someday. I think Al’s warming up to the idea.
79. My earliest memory is of eating a strawberry candy in what used to be the MGM in Reno, Nevada.
80. I get migraines with all the classic symptoms: aura, nausea, agonizing pain that goes away with sleep but leaves me weak for the rest of the day.
81. I am also so sensitive to light that I wear sunglasses inside, although I try not to wear them in stores, because the employees start to follow me around.
82. I love the desert, the mountains and the ocean.
83. Therefore, I should live in California. (Or I could give up the desert part, and live in Hawaii. But I would still miss the desert.)
84. I am not a shoe girl, and it always amazes me that some people notice other people’s shoes. But I would buy a million coats and purses and hats, if I could.
85. When I’m stressed out, I rearrange my Amazon.com shopping cart. It’s got thousands of dollars worth of books in it. I just keep clicking “save for later.”
86. I think my brother and my sister are two of the most awesome people ever. They’re not related to each other, and they’ve never met.
87. My brother is 13 years younger than I am and my sister is 31 years younger.
88. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a cartographer, a vet, a Navy jet pilot, an architect, a National Geographic photographer, and a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse. Not all at the same time. Part of me still wants to do four of those things.
89. When I was in fifth grade, some kid told me that a giant wave was going to cross California and drown northern Nevada. So, with my friend Jessica’s input, I designed a submarine so we could survive the flood.
90. Now I’m married to a submariner. I think this was fate, and fate has a sense of humor.
91. I am very, very proud of my husband and what he does for a living, and I don’t think I ever tell him enough.
92. And I just realized that the great Northern Nevada floods happened just a few months after that. Now I’m a little creeped out.
93. I can remember smells and tastes just by thinking about them.
94. I love getting mail.
95. I used to be a snobby television watcher and anti-reality TV (of the non-Banyan type, if you know what I mean). But I no longer am, and I really love competition shows, like “American Idol” and “So You Think You Can Dance.”
96. I watch more TV now than I ever did when I worked in television. I spend a lot of my television watching time wondering, “How’d they get THAT release?”
97. I kept scrapbooks before scrapbooking was a verb. Now I no longer do, which makes me sad, but I have boxes of stuff to put in the scrapbooks I no longer make.
98. I like to make up words, and I think languages are living things.
99. But it does drive me nuts when people use the wrong form of “your” or “you’re” or add apostrophes where they should not be.
100. I am definitely a night owl, trying to live on an early rising schedule. I think of myself as being on Pacific Standard Time while living an East Coast life.

Bonus (101): My favorite color is red. And blue. And green. And orange. And...

And since I never tag people but #102 might be "I like to be unpredictable," I'm going to tag Sarah, Jeannine, Crashie, Tinker and Vusova (because you asked for seven and got 100, and now you have to return the favor! Okay, you don't have to, if you don't want to).

Still Important: Save Handmade

2009-01-29T22:07:00.004-05:00

Yes, this is for sidebars, but I think it deserves its own post, and since I missed the blog-in yesterday, this is my makeup post. I did write about the CPSIA here, though.

Please, please, please do whatever is in your power to help bring attention to this issue, and allow small businesspeople, craftspeople and artists, both those in America, and those who import to America, to continue making a living doing what they love and making high-quality toys, clothing and other wonderful products for children.

(Not only is handmade worth saving on its own, but this is not the time to be cutting off more sources of income or shutting down another part of the economy.)

And the Self-Discovery Continues

2009-01-27T08:10:00.005-05:00

You Are a Playwright

You are a highly literate wordsmith. You love both reading and writing.

You are also a natural storyteller. You can turn a mediocre anecdote into a riveting tale.

You find people and all aspects of life fascinating. No topic is off limits for you.

In modern times, you would make a good filmmaker or novelist.

What's Your Medieval Profession?

I just found this quiz here, and I was sort of hoping to get "cartographer" like she did, but honestly, playwright is just as good, and probably more accurate, since my maps are more story-ish than scientific.

So here's a story for you, to go with that picture at the top:

I worked in Orlando briefly one year, and my brother came to visit. He's much younger than I am (well, 13 years younger, as opposed to my sister, who is 31 years younger, so young is relative, but I digress...). At the time, he was about 12 or 13.

I took him to some crazy museum - I think it was the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum - and in the gift shop, they had these fake skulls for sale. I turned my back to look at something, and when I turned around again, my little brother was standing in the middle of the gift shop, skull in hand, looking in its eyes and saying, yes, you guessed it (speaking of playwrights):

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him!

The things we don't know about ourselves:

2009-01-26T15:29:00.001-05:00

Apparently, I was not such a late bloomer as I thought.

I Got Yer Inspirational Speeches Right Here.

2009-01-20T13:05:00.003-05:00

I have a funny passion and love for training montages in movies, and the equivalent in non-sports films... the movie might be awful, and the training montage will still make me choke up. And this has the same effect!

40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes @ Yahoo! Video

And, lest I neglect real history, congratulations, President Obama. Your speech was incredible.

Earth Shaking

2009-01-18T22:53:00.007-05:00

Fifteen years ago, not exactly, but on the Sunday night before Martin Luther King Day in 1994, I stayed up way too late. I was a college freshmen and I had a paper due on Tuesday, so I thought it was a great idea to pull my all-nighter on Sunday night, so I could sleep Monday night.

At 3:30 a.m., I crashed. And one hour later, I woke up, reluctantly, from a deep sticky sleep because other things were crashing. Onto my laptop. This being 1994, laptops were very special and very expensive, even with black-and-white screens, and I woke up to one thought, My father is gonna kill me if something bad happens to my computer. So I tumbled out of bed, heavily, and stood over my laptop holding my arms straight out over my computer to protect it.

Then I heard voices in the dorm's hallway, and I thought, Wow, those people are partying late, even for a three-day weekend. In spite of the fact that I was not at all curious about why things were falling on my laptop, curiosity is nonetheless a big part of my personality, so I abandoned my defenseless laptop and made my way to the door, opened it, and asked the people in the hallway, "What's going on?" As in, why didn't you tell me you were having a party!

They looked at me like I was crazy, and said, "It's an earthquake, Alison."

Oh, well that explained it.

There's not really an ending to this story, other than the fact that the computer survived just fine, and ever since, Martin Luther King, Jr. and that earthquake are inextricably intertwined in my mind.

And that brings us to this particular Martin Luther King Day, which precedes an Inauguration Day that wouldn't be what it is going to be, if it weren't for Martin Luther King. And even though I didn't get Inauguration tickets like I had hoped, I still feel so glad and so lucky that I get to watch this incredible event take place, even on television.

So I just want to say thank you, Dr. King, for all you did, and for all you gave. I wish you could see just how much you, too, moved the world, and in your case, for the better.

Moving Announcement

2009-01-16T10:53:00.001-05:00

Coming Soon!

2009-01-14T10:12:00.007-05:00

After a very long hiatus, I'm moving my blog back to this address, on Friday, January 16, from its current home.

UPDATED: The move seems to have gone quite smoothly, but please feel free to let me know if you encounter any problems, especially as I will be tweaking settings and layout for a few weeks to come. Leave a comment, or contact me directly at paintandink @ gmail.com.

Living the Map

2009-01-13T10:39:00.001-05:00

Living the Map is such a delicious phrase, isn't it? Just three words, but packed with so much possibility that they make me want to pack my bags, jump in the car and get moving. And that's before learning the story behind them.

Daniel Seddiqui, a recent graduate of my own alma mater, couldn't find a job after graduation, so he hopped in his car, and set out on an extraordinary journey: traveling to 50 states in 50 weeks, working at a different job in each place: meatpacker, farmer, rodeo announcer, wedding coordinator, Border Patrol agent, and, appropriately, a cartographer.

Daniel as a rodeo announcer.

He has a whole page on his site to explain why, but really, why not?

Truth be told, I am doing exactly what I want to be doing right now, and delighted about it. But I still have a list of dream careers, from ESL teacher to marine biologist (he did that, too) to Imagineer, and wouldn't it be fun someday, when I'm itching for something new, to try them each out for a week or even a month? And, even better, to take the road trip of all road trips, to each of the 50 states. It is my secret (not-so-green*) dream to travel the United States in an RV, and just take my ink and brushes and paints with me, to map as I go.

But Daniel's story also appeals to me for another reason. I've been thinking a lot lately about the world and all its greatness and all its problems and how two people from the same country can have such extremely different opinions about how things should be. Not to mention people from two different hemispheres.

And I've been thinking about how some people live in very small, constrained worlds, when they don't have to, often just because they don't realize there is more to the world beyond their limited experiences. Some people get very belligerent when they say this is how things should be, regarding this issue or that policy, or this war or that country's actions, or this religion or that philosophy. Some people don't seem to ever consider other perspectives. And I used to think this was because they were narrow-minded, but maybe it's because the just don't know there are other perspectives. They don't remember how to look.

As Daniel Seddiqui says, "I was unaware of what life was like outside my bubble."

Daniel as a marine biologist.

I'm not against opinions, not at all. I am fond of opinions, especially my own, and frankly, some of my own probably are narrow-minded, too. It's just that I think - my opinion is - that the more different types of experiences you have, the more tolerant you becomes of other viewpoints, other lifestyles, and other cultures. You don't always have to understand why people do things a different way. You just have to understand that there is a different way.

I think most of the readers of this blog have had experiences in learning that there is a different way. And maybe you have found, like I have, when it comes to solving problems, that once you understand that other perspectives exist, the more willing you'll tend to be to try fluid solutions instead of applying one-size-fits-all, rigid solutions. I often get overwhelmed by obstacles and problems, but as my horizons become ever broader, my mind is more and more likely to jump immediately to thinking of ways to solve the problems.

You just have to have one motivation, more than any other: curiosity. Even while I think there are no certain solutions to the world's problems, I think curiosity is a key element in all of them. (We can't try new solutions until we want to find out what they might be.) And I mean any curiosity (as long as it doesn't cause harm, of course), even if it's just finding out how people decorate their homes in another country. Because curiosity is like creativity: nurture the spark and you can build a fire.

So while there aren't many people who can take a journey like Daniel Seddiqui's and literally "live the map," the rest of us can travel vicariously, explore virtually, and nurture our own curiosity. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think curiosity is an innate human quality, and some people just don't remember how to keep the fire going. And I also think it's contagious. The more we indulge our own curiosity, the more it will spread, and the more our collective horizons will expand: curiosity about decorating becomes curiosity about daily life becomes curiosity about economics becomes curiosity about government.

Daniel as a cartographer.

We don't have to become experts, but I think eventually, after curiosity becomes knowledge, knowledge transforms into ideas. It simple, maybe too simple, but it's a start, I think. And then we can, together, really make the world a better place.

(At least, that's my opinion.)

* Maybe by the time I achieve that dream, there will be solar powered RVs.

The Biggest Little City

2009-01-12T13:00:00.001-05:00

I'm going to make a concerted effort this year to share more of my artwork on my blog. This map of Reno, Nevada, commissioned last year, is one of my favorites, but that could just be because Reno is the closest thing I have to a hometown...

... No, it really is one of my favorites. I am especially fond of the compass rose and Circus Circus.

And Fleischmann Planetarium, because I spent a lot of time there in high school, happy in my nerdiness. That's where I first ate astronaut ice cream. Not on my list of most delicious foods ever eaten, but clearly on my list of most memorable foods ever eaten. (Right up there with pulling a spoon out of my soup to find a tentacle draped across it. And that is another story.)

Maps, to Start the Year Off on the Right Foot, er, Hand...

2009-01-05T21:31:00.001-05:00

I hope this blog post finds you all well and starting off your new year happily...

We are back from our northeast post-holiday cross-year excursion, having enjoyed delicious beverages, eaten some of the best breakfasts ever, and cheered each of our favorite football teams to victory (mine, college, and his, professional).

And now I have wrapped up my first day back by diving into the backlog of Google Alerts I have set up for keywords and phrases like "imaginary maps," "cartography," "watercolor maps," and every variation of my name and/or shop name that I could think of.

This is often, especially for "cartography," a lovely way to discover other people's maps and artwork and generally delightful things.

Like the Hand Drawn Map Association. Where have you been all my life, oh, Hand Drawn Map Association?

Actually (tucking my head down and lowering my voice), I have seen the Hand Drawn Map Association before... but couldn't remember how to get there again... lost the map, you see.

Not a problem. Thanks to Cartophilia, I found my way.

I love the detail in this map, by Alex Williams:

This anonymous map is great... bringing to mind the question, what did I do while spending countless hours in meetings over the years? Nothing nearly so interesting, I think.

I'm fond of this one, by Andrea Biller-Collins, since my birthday is Groundhog Day:

And an imaginary world, or two, after my own heart (drawn by Jamie McQuinn, who I believe is the Cartophiliac himself, which might just show that all roads take us back to where we started):

Moving Pictures

2008-12-28T11:43:00.001-05:00

This is an video of art illustrating a song about art. It's just lovely. Magical, actually.

(Via Luca Has 2 Mommies)

I loved the video so much, I went to iTunes and bought the song.