Mapping Mythaca

This is the map I'm working on for the next edition of Journey to Mythaca. It's made up of drawings from the book by kids who've read it.

The deadline for the project just crept up on me. Why didn't I get started before? Now I realize how good it would be to have a close-to-publishable map done a week from now.

Today I wanted to do a quick version of the entire project, to get an idea of what I'll need to think about, to see what tools or materials to look for, to get a vision of the whole, of its potential. And to see what I might — or might not — be able to get done in week.

I pulled up the scanned images of all the artwork kids sent. It's children's art, so every piece is full of magic. I chose a series of images I thought would work well as a group to tell the story of the Journey to Mythaca: each of the main characters, images of each setting (lots of trees). I didn't spend any time cleaning the images up; I just shrunk them down to about 2 square inches or smaller, lined them up on a few pages and printed them out.

I drew a border on a piece of vellum (the final map will have a beautiful border, but today it was just four lines) and then, using a light board, I started moving the images around under the vellum. When the position on the page looked reasonably logical, I traced the images onto the vellum with a not-very-good pen.

(I'm weighing whether to trace the images or not. How does a map made of images traced by the same hand in the same line weight compare to the exquisite wabi of the children's own work? I'm not sure which way I'll go, but so far my plan is to trace the children's work.)

Leah's wonderful map provides the basic framework, but the drawings of many artists are included on the map for the book. There are still spaces on the map that could be filled.

I don't have a picture of the birdwoman, for instance, or of the details of the market. How about Icaria flying? She's up there, but Star's Icaria should really be standing in the woods. And where's Ivan?

See the author section of the Journey to Mythaca website for details about where to send your drawings.

I can see that over the next few days, I'll be going back to the original drawings, scanning some more, and others better, photoshopping some, resizing some (probably more than once), and then cutting them up so I can use them like puzzle pieces. If I'd cut them up right off, there wouldn't be two ladders in the current draft.

I'm sure it would be possible, and probably not even hard, for me to learn how to do this on the computer, but I am enjoying the process of tracing by hand. It gives me the time to marvel at the grace of the children's work, the line of one wing, the curve of a branch; and at how adept they are at the intricacies of fantasy worlds.

My plan is to give this project the greater part of my time for the next week, then set it aside for a couple weeks, and complete it the last week of August.

I'll continue looking at kids' work with an eye toward including some, and posting whatever I get on the website. (To be realistic, I may not get to posting the work in the gallery until the fall.)