This was a brilliant class! I love maps and especially old maps. I’m always fascinated how much information that is still in the landscape around us we can see in maps from let’s say 16th, 18th century, maybe a bit distorted. However, I’ve never tried to draw a map myself. So when I saw this class, I immediately thought YES! 

It was a great self exploration exercise and just really fun project. 

I’ve been living in Vietnam since October 2019 and should be soon moving back home, so this was absolutely obvious theme for my map. 

In my map, I wanted to include not only the experiences but also the time and the imparity of how I perceived it. So some months take over more space because they just dragged on, while others are squashed together because they flew by. 
There is a track that connects all the milestones because the experiences happened in certain order, however, the means of transport are not that important, they primarily serve the purpose of getting from one place to another through the changing landscape. 
When naming my landmarks, I used Welsh names for some of them. I used to live in Wales and I’ve been missing it this past six months a lot. I never really managed to learn much Welsh but I loved the language and the sound of it, so I wanted my map to reflect all that. 
I wanted to use a pop-up hot-air balloon as a symbol of my return home. In the end I decided against it because I felt that it would need the boat and the train to be turned into pop-up pictures as well and that didn’t seem to fit the project; however, I might try it in future. 

I've never done such a complex project in wet on wet watercolour, so I was very nervous about the result but in the end, I’m really pleased with it. 

 

 

Update December 2022

Recently, I finished reading a wonderful book about travelling and cartography called The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet and what a better summary than creating a map of his life's journey.

First, I painted a map using a pen and watercolours, however, it felt too busy, so I drew another one using ink in only limited number of colours.

I like both of them for different reasons but I feel that the yellow ink is too bright and I would like it more if it was more brown-ish.