Painting, Inking, Mapping, Daydreaming

Hi all! My name is Alison, aka paintandink, and your host, Cartophiliac, has graciously invited me to be one of the contributors to Cartophilia.

Like many of you, I imagine, I have loved maps as long as I can remember. I blame National Geographic. When I was a kid, I papered my bedroom ceiling with maps from National Geographic. I would lie on my bed, staring up at those maps for hours. I dreamed of going to faraway places and I also dreamed of making maps, of working for National Geographic. I hoarded maps. I pored over them. I started writing to consulates and travel bureaus, asking for more maps.

That quote in this blog's banner?

"I think that the constant study of maps is apt to disturb men’s reasoning powers" - Lord Salisbury

He's got a point. Maybe I should have gone outside more, but in my mind, I was having grand adventures. And I was lucky enough to have real adventures too. From which I brought back maps as souvenirs. When my dad took me to Ireland at 14, I brought back a poster of a hand-drawn map that I still have today.

It's wrinkled and banged-up.

I still obsess over traveling and maps and still collect maps, haphazardly - big maps, small maps, ripped-out-of-magazine maps - although my maps aren’t taped up on the ceiling these days. They’re sorely neglected, as a matter of fact. Rolled up. Folded in boxes. And I have a lot of maps from a road trip stuffed in a drawer. One of these days, I'll frame the good ones.

In the meantime, I'll tell you about those, and the other fun, weird, quirky, interesting maps I find.

I'm still bringing them back as souvenirs, too. This is a crime map of Edinburgh's Royal Mile. This one deserves its own post.

I did not become a National Geographic cartographer, but almost 20 years later, I have become a mapmaker. Using dip pens and India ink and watercolor, I’ve spent the last five years making treasure maps, fantasy maps, custom maps of real and imaginary places, abstract maps, and travel art.




I’m excited to be part of Cartophilia. Thank you, Jamie, for the invitation.

You can also find me at my own blog, The Explorer’s Notebook, and my artwork at the Interimaginational Institute for Fantastical Exploration and Cartography (that is, my Etsy shop).

Mexico vs. Great Britain

Sam Hughes likes to write and post Things of Interest. Of interest to me today is The Great British Venn Diagram. This handy diagram helps to clarify (for those who seem to have trouble keeping it straight) the difference between England, Great Britain, the British Isles and the United Kingdom.

Via Catholicgauze, who has created his own diagram to explain Mexico versus Mexico versus Mexico

#510

Postcards Take a Vacation

Last week I lamented the lack of map postcards, and postcards in general while on vacation in North Carolina. On our last day on the beach, we decided to try parasailing. After a long drive around the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune, we arrived at Atlantic Beach in time to find out that all parasail flights had been canceled due to thunderstorms. So we toured historic Fort Macon instead.

And there, in the park gift shop, I found two map postcards!



Both of these cards depict the Outer Banks of the North Carolina coast, a portion of NC that I have never actually visited, but that has never stopped this map postcards collector before.

The second postcard records the many shipwrecks of the area. An interesting thing I learned at Fort Macon was that just a couple years after the state of North Carolina had restored the Fort as part of a State Park, the U.S. Army re-armed the fort as part of the coastal defences in 1942. Several of those ships on the card were sunk by German U-Boats.

After returning home from this vacation, I was pleasantly surprised to find this fine postcard to add to my collection. I've never been to Scotland either.

Thanks Allison!

Naturally, when you return home from a week's vacation, you need to go grocery shopping. Another surprise! The grocery store has an Ohio postcard that I haven't seen before. w00t!

So, I guess I can call this a successful postcard vacation after all.

Scotland Towed

"Every June, Scotland is towed 1000 miles south so it can have a summer. Only 10% of people in Scotland know this."

It's true! Would your Uncle Cartophiliac lie to you?



From Great Lies to Tell Kids by Andy Riley; the somewhat deranged, but very funny author of The Book of Bunny Suicides.

Who doesn't enjoy telling small "tall tales" to kids?... you know, just to mess with their mind...

Other good lies from the book:

"In Denmark, they use bacon as banknotes."

"There used to be a ship in that bottle but it sank."

"Most birds wear parachutes in case they suddenly forget how to fly."