Angela Eastgate

Thursday, 5 September 2019

World Map

Some work in progress photos from a project I did for a friends wedding in July. This map ended up being the seating plan tableau for the wedding guests. I haven't posted any photos of the end product as it has the names of all the wedding guests on there. I just want to explain how I went about this project while in the makings. Basically I started off with a pretty clear idea in mind and tweaked a few things along the way. I liked the idea of painting the map on to a piece of timber or wood where you could see the natural design of the wood. I actually just used a cheap piece of timber board from Bunning's as the canvas and found this to be the perfect back drop for the map. The natural timber sort of looks like ocean currents underneath all the world continents.

Then I had some trouble with the size of the map. I had traced a map that we had at home (with good old baking paper) but it was just too small for the size of the timber canvas. So I thought I'd go and get the map enlarged at Office works, however I soon realised that its not possible to simply enlarge a map and print it, it actually breaks a copy write law. This is especially regarding maps. Great... good to know! So in the end I used the grid technique, where you draw a grid on top of the original image that you want to enlarge, then draw and equivalent/ larger grid on another larger piece of paper. Its easier to draw by small sections. So I drew the whole world map by hand including all those tiny islands at the top of Canada.

Then I traced the larger version of the map on to the canvas with lead pencil and all that was left to do was paint. White Gesso for a first layer (which I actually really like "as is") Then the idea was to make certain countries stand out with different colours as they were important countries to the bride and groom. These particular countries were "Table numbers", for example; Table 1= Australia, Table 2=Canada etc. Unfortunately we decided it was necessary to leave our Antarctica as it wasnt really working with the whole design of the seating plan. This was a really enjoyable project. The actual artwork is original but the idea of a world map seating plan has been used many times. This particular couple had been well traveled and lived in various countries so the world map was very fitting for their wedding.

End note. As you can see I've used duplo blocks to stop the baking paper from curling up for the photo. (Yes I have kids...)