Monday, November 26, 2012

2. Polarstine

It didn't take long at all for the First Thing to pop in to my head when I saw Craig's polar bear tea towel. Right away it made me think of a flag. I imagined a nation state of polar bears with their own customs, laws, society and boundaries. This made me think that my nation of polar bears would need to have a map.


Maps

I love maps. I can remember looking through my parents' great big Atlas of maps as a child and wondering about all the far away places to be found on the pages inside. I still love maps today including Google Maps, but for some reason I'm not really bothered about SatNavs. I'd much prefer to have a real Road Atlas in the car with me all the time.

The pinnacle of maps in the UK as far as most people in the UK are concerned come from the Ordnance Survey.   Ordnance Survey Website

My idea of a great holiday is climbing the fells in the Lake District with the relevant OS map folded up in my backpack. The detail is superb and I can happily gaze at the maps for hours thinking about all the wonderful places they can take me.

Alfred Wainwright

But even though the OS maps can't be beaten for accuracy, the maps I actually prefer reading in regards to their romantic imagery and depiction of the beautiful Lakeland scenery are from Alfred Wainwright's walking guides. The Wainwright Society

Wainwright's extensive set of books are all completely hand drawn as well as the text being handwritten. He writes in an eloquent and often poetic way about the landscape which is far removed from just showing you where objects are located and how to get from A to B. After a long day on the hills, you have the chance to relive your adventure and plan the next day's by leafing through these lovingly created books.


My Creation

I decided to combine the imagery of an old map along with my own Wainwright style illustration of a polar bear. I found a nice image of a polar bear on the internet and proceeded to scratch away in Photoshop on a layer above with my Wacom tablet until I thought it looked a little bit like a Wainwright illustration.





Next I wanted my illustration to be a pop-out contained within the old-fashioned map. I wanted it to be an old map because I have always been fascinated by the concept of the ever changing boundaries that we humans put upon the landscape when we create our own little enclaves of identity called countries and their corresponding paper resemblances called maps. It is not so surprising that people can of course draw new maps and create new boundaries, but if you look at the earth from a geological timescale, even the landscape is just as changeable as the imaginary lines drawn upon it. Polarstine, the name of my imagined polar bear land is meant to conjure up images of global warming, the struggle of adapting to change, and the political conflicts that go alongside the creation of maps and nations and boundaries.







The final touch was to add the polar bear flag inspired by Craig's tea towel which I hope links it nicely back to my original inspiration from Craig.

Even my daughter Tabitha is sitting next to me now wondering what Craig is going to make of this. We shall look forward to it with anticipation. Hopefully even a few others will be reading this and thinking the same.

4 comments:

  1. Brilliant! Curious to see what the response post will be about.

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    1. Really lovely, this looks like it's going to be a great blog, how exciting x

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  2. You've put so much time, effort and creativity into this. Very impressed! Gary

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    1. Thanks Gary,
      I started work tonight on my next post which I'll have up by the weekend at the latest. I'm really happy with how it's all progressing. I only wish I had started the concept months or even years ago. Better late than never of course.

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