Hello, and welcome back to my blog! This is a very special blog post because this is my last blog post and the reveal of my map. I know that I have been promising to show you my map for weeks, but I swear that this time I will actually present it to you. I've worked very hard on this map, and I am so excited to finally reveal it. Before the big reveal, I wanted to reflect on the past twelve weeks. Over these weeks, I have had many accomplishments and discoveries, and now, I will be sharing some of my biggest. Prior to this blog post, I have written a lot. To be exact, I have written 16,232 total words, which is enough to fill almost 33 pages on a document. That is by far the most I have ever written on a specific project. Additionally, I have done 8 weeks of research, listened to one podcast, watched 14 videos, read one book with over 200 maps, learned 45 new things, and worked on a map for 26 days. Sure, all of this looks good on paper, but what has impacted me most isn't a fact that you can write on a piece of paper. I have found something that I love, something that I am passionate about. I could have chosen anything for this project, and chances are, I would have hated anything else that I decided to research. So, I am happy. Happy that I didn't decide to choose something that I didn't care about. Happy that I found this world of maps that I didn't know existed. After all of this reminiscing, let's come back to the present. It is finally time to reveal my hard work, my map. I know that you have already seen the beginning stages of the process, but a lot had happened since then. So, I'm going to catch you up to speed. There were a few more steps in my process to get to the end result, but before I talk about those, I want to show you what the finished product looks like. Now, before you see this, keep in mind that I had a limited amount of time to work on this, and I probably could have made it better with more time. However, considering that, I think that it is really good. You may remember that in my first blog post, I said that I wanted to make a map that was recognizable, and I am happy to inform you that I did meet that goal. When I brought it into school, I showed to a couple of my friends that spent some time at my house. One person in particular spent a large amount of time at my house, and many of the "skylines" were heavily based off of my memories with her. Her house is actually two houses down from my former house, so it was a short commute between the two. After showing her the map, she had the biggest smile on her face. The map took her on a walk down memory lane, and she remembered all of the fun times we had together. This caused me to be happy because my map was able to leave an impact on someone. However, this would not have the same effect on anybody else. I do think that it could tell a story to anybody who randomly picked it up. After all of my research, I have learned that the most important part of a map is its ability to tell a story, and I think I was successful in that aspect of it. I think that's enough talking for now. It's finally the moment you've all been waiting for!! Here is my map. Here it is! Before I being to explain my map and my process, I would like for you to take a closer look. Try to pay attention to the little details before I explain them from my perspective. After examining many different maps, I have found that I might have a different view than someone else. Now, I will share the rest of my process to making this map.
First, I finished drawing all of my "skylines". I decided that I wanted to have a total of 11 different "skylines". Each of these of course are derived from my memories over the years. and it was so special to me to be able to recreate these. Some of my favorites that I added were "Biking Bluff", "Marker Labs"', and "Creek Crossing." It's kind of hard for you to see the small details of the skylines, but in person, you can tell what the specific details that form these memories. I think I did a good job making the skylines, and they added good dimensions to the map. Similarly to Anton Thomas's map, the drawings added a more personal element that I couldn't have obtained without them. Next, I added more detail to the other aspects of my map. In order to make my map the best I possibly could, I decided to make sure that every little stone could be as detailed as possible, but of course, that is a basically impossible. Despite this hyperbole, I still wanted to make it as detailed as was reasonable for my time crunch. Specifically, I did this with the bricks and other stones. This house was home to a lot of stones. There were sidewalks, patios, borders, and walls all made of bricks and stones. Although a beautiful accent to the landscape, it was an egregious task to complete when drawing these. Not only were there a lot of them, but they came in all different shapes and sizes. For example, on one sidewalk, some bricks were vertical and other were horizontal. After all is said and done, I'm glad to say that I put in the extra effort just to make my map a little better. Also, I sketched some mountains on the hilly parts of the map. Anton Thomas used this technique for his map, and I thought that it added a perfect touch. So, I decided to use this technique as well, and I think that it did a good job displaying the physical geography of the yard without making it look too formal. Afterwards, it was time to draw my compass rose. The compass rose is an essential part of the map if you ask me. Without one, you would have no sense of direction whatsoever. You might be asking Why would that be important for a fantasy map? Well, I would say that there are two main reasons for this answer. First, in the hypothetical situation where you get lost in said fantasy world, you would need your compass rose to tell you which way to escape. Now, that isn't very practical because that only happens in the movies, but there is a more relatable reason. Compass roses make your world real. A lot of the times, maps are of real places that you can physically be located in, but that isn't always the case. For me, my map is technically of a real place, but you can't physically step into it the way that I have drawn it. The compass rose gives it an element of reality that you wouldn't have without it. The process to making this was quite long. I had to line up my map to Google Earth to make sure that it was accurately pointing north. After doing that, I had to come up with a unique design. I wanted to create a compass rose that set the tone of the map, and that is why I chose the design I did. After playing around with different colors and shapes for a while, I was finally able to choose the design I wanted- an incredible feat for someone as indecisive as me. In order to make it perfectly symmetrical, I decided to make exact measurements. Furthermore, I used a ruler to construct a mini grid to enable myself to put the points in the correct spot. After erasing it once, I got it to look how I wanted for it to. Lastly, I colored it to add some pop and allow for it to shine. In conclusion, I think that this compass rose adds a child-like element to the map, and it brings me back to my time of childhood. It sets the tone that I was going for and is a perfect fit. Then, it was time for the second-to-last step of my map-making journey, coloring. Although this may seem like a really fun task compared to the rest of my process, this was actually my least favorite part. Overall, I had a fantastic time making this map, but the coloring part definitely was the low. This just shows how you don't have to like every aspect of something to enjoy it. I have never really been one for coloring, and I'm not the best at blending colors to make it look extra fancy. However, I decided to try my hand at it this time. I started by coloring all of the skylines because then, I would be able to color around them afterwards. Later, I decided to tackle the most difficult task of coloring in the bricks. Most people would decide to color each brick the same uniform color of red. However, I am not most people, so I decided that I would color the bricks with ten different shades of red. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a bad decision, but It did make it look more realistic. Halfway through coloring the first sidewalk, I thought that I couldn't go on any longer. But, I pushed through the back pain and completed every individual brick. After that, I was finally in the home stretch. I colored all of the lawns and woods different shades of green. As a final addition, I drew some trees. Since my map was from a bird's eye view, I drew the trees as though you were looking at them from above. Lastly, I wanted to give my map a fantasy twist. So, I decided to make it an island. Moreover, I would draw clouds around the island to make it look like two things. One, I was in the clouds when I was at this house. The rest of the world was below me, and it was just me in my favorite place. Two, it would make it look like you are inside of my mind. In the cartoons, they always make it look like a person's dreams are in clouds with unicorns and rainbows, so I decided to take one aspect of this to my map, the clouds. I wanted it to seem like the reader was taking a peek into my memories and my past. Anyways, I did this by drawing upside down U's throughout the outside of the borders of the island. I did this all over to make it look more textured. I thought that the clouds in regular pencil were a little boring, so I finished it off with a touch of blue. After completing this final step, my map was finally done. Once I took a step back and glanced over my map, the months of research and hard work came full circle. All of the little techniques and details about maps that I had learned had played into the creation of the map. Without it, it might have looked like a pretty drawing, but I think that I was able to combine elements of both a map and a drawing. With each color, a new meaning arose, and I don't exactly know why. I think it enlightened me on how fast time flies by. When you are young you think that these days are never going to end, but as you grow up, you start to lose the light in your eyes and become obsessed with other things. You don't stop to cherish the moments when you are younger because you don't feel the need to, but now that I have grown and these times have passed, I realize the importance of never forgetting these times. You may not have known it at the time, but each memory has had more of an impact than you knew. Consequently, this map revealed this to me, and that is why I am so glad that I chose to draw this map specifically. Whether I like it or not, this house has shaped me as a person to this day. The fun times taught me how to express myself and love my surroundings. The tough times have taught me that you need bad things to happen in order to create a brighter future. For example, we got chickens when I was in fifth grade. One weekend, my parents were out of town, and the chicks had just moved into a bigger coop. I walked outside and found that my favorite of the bunch had been taken by a mystery animal. All that I had left was a few feathers. This was a really hard moment for me, but it taught me to cherish the things I have only if they are for a short period of time. Even if you lose it and it hurts, it still caused you to have a bright smile, and that is all that matters in the long run. This is one of the many lessons that I learned at this house, and although it isn't directly displayed on the map, the map gave me an opportunity to reflect on all of the things that happened over the ten years that I lived there.
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