We immediately feel empathy with the place and can easily imagine it to be real. That helps us immediately understand something of the shape, form and patterns before our eyes. It’s simplicity helps it not be overly detailed but it resonates because it’s comprised of elements of real maps that we immediately recognise. This is as well crafted a fantasy map as you’ll find. The names follow the theme: Messypotamia, Strawberry River Flow, Beaches and Cream and Rocky Road and there’s even a unique coordinate system comprising longitude and splatitude.There’s even a cherry on top of both the island (which appears to be the inverted cone of the upturned ice cream island) and the north arrow, the slopes mimic a slowly melting sauce and the description both balances the map layout and adds conviction to the story. It has an antique burnish to the paper to give it age (and authenticity) and the detail is drawn in a semi-realistic hand-drawn style so we get the feel of swampy areas and forests as well as more geometric depictions of settlement and transportation. There’s a nod to an antique style with raked coastal vignettes, ornate hand-written letter forms and old school hachuring technique on the slopes. What a fantastic approach! But it’s the map that really takes this fantastical place to another level. The map was to be printed on the inside of the unfolded cover – the wrapper to the ice cream sandwich. The novel itself was to be encased in covers that made it appear as if an ice cream sandwich (chocolate covers with vanilla pages). It’s this last example that demonstrates that really, the fertile imagination innate in us all is often the start of something rather special in map terms.Īs the Crow Flies cARTography drew Ice Cream Island to accompany a children’s novel series about a fantasy island of ice cream. Cartography extends from reference mapping through to single theme maps, from national map series to a kid drawing his or her classroom and from a cartography student creating their first web map to a boy scout drawing out their imaginary worlds. But yet people still find additional themes, objects and thoughts that give them something to make a map from. He now specializes in fantastical and whimsical piñata-based sculpture, most notably his series Piñatas of Earthly Delights based on the creatures that roam the canvas of Hieronymus Bosch’s, Garden of Earthly Delights.Is there anything that cannot be mapped? Think about it…the entire world is our mappable object at every conceivable scale from planetary to the atomic. He reorientated himself with classes at Pasadena City College in sculpting, drawing, and painting, extending into bronze casting where he initially worked in an abstract, figurative style and exhibited in group shows. After a few years of moderate acting success in the Texas market, Benavidez found himself drawn back to art and headed west to California. The artist’s website reads: “Drawn to art at a young age, but raised in rural South Texas with very little access to an art education, Benavidez followed a secondary interest in acting earning a BFA at Texas State University. His latest series of piñatas was inspired by the characters from the Luttrell Psalter, a famous medieval manuscript. Finding inspiration in famous paintings and literature, Robert Benavidez creates incredible metallic piñatas.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |