Fragment, consider revising

I apologise in advance because this is going to be a short and potentially very boring post, as all I've been working on this week is the Thames map commission.

It's slow, but steady progress, and the most difficult project I've undertaken by a considerable amount!

You may be wondering about the title of this post. It's the pesky little phrase which shows when you've typed a sentence in Microsoft Word and it underlines it with a green squiggle but doesn't actually know what's wrong and leaves the ball in your court. Do you change the sentence or plough on? Generally I ignore it.

Anyway, what has that got to do with my week?

Well, I had been intending to complete this map all in one go and end up with a long, thin, beautiful representation of the Thames which could be framed for the wall once finished. Could I find a piece of watercolour paper big enough? No, of course not. I could either buy a 10 metre roll or revise my plan, and fragment the map. Which is what I've done - revised and fragmented.

It will now be painted in two sections which will be imperceptibly joined (I'm assured) using some digital wizardry.

This is what it looks like so far, and I warn you, these photos are less than exciting.

The piece in the foreground is the detailed draft I've been provided, which is very useful indeed.

That little red square with holes cut in it is a house stencil I made to make my life easier. Let me tell you, there are a lot of houses in Oxford!

This is a close up of the Oxford section. I'm looking forward to outlining it in pen as it's not very well defined at the moment, especially in photos.

The other thing which I've made a little more progress on this week is this doodle for the art swap which I'm doing with Debbie, a very talented portrait artist. You can see her Facebook page here.The doodle is for Debbie's daughter and contains some of her favourite toys. It still needs a bit of colour adding.

That's it for today, I said it would be short! I'm off to relax and try not to dream of the Thames tonight.

Oh, at the end of a very boring post may not be the best time to ask you all to vote for me in the UK Blog Awards! I've entered in the Art and Culture category and I think all you need to do is go to my profile and register your vote (from Monday 10 November). Thank you very much!

I'm sharing today's post over at Handmade Harbour.

Mappy Halloween!

Nope, that's not a typo in the title! Halloween and the week before have been devoted to sketching out a rough draft of the illustrated map of the Thames which I've been commissioned to create.

I did have the night off last night though for a Halloween party with friends which involved eating of a lot of sweets, 'spider' pizzas and this ghostly cake!

I made the little ghosts out of grapes draped in icing, but the following morning one had a hole in its head where the grape had 'leaked' and dissolved the icing. Luckily it just made it a little creepier!

Anyway, back to the map which I've been working on all afternoon. This week has been all about deciding on the style of symbols to represent supermarkets, golf courses, shopping centres etc.

We've decided to go with illustrations for the shopping centres and anything that can be represented as a picture to limit the amount of symbols and make it more visually appealing.

I quite like this scroll but it's not really suitable for attractions such as theme parks, so I've come up with a slightly less historic looking sign instead. Below is a very geographically incorrect sample of a map with the symbols on, although a few ideas have changed since I did this.

I loved using my new Winsor & Newton watercolours and am so glad I chose the pans rather than tubes. They're lovely to paint with and the colour applies really smoothly.

Here are a few snippets from the scale draft of the map. Below is London, obviously I hope!

And Legoland!

If you'd like to keep up to date with the progress of my map, pop over to my Facebook page where I'll be sharing (hopefully) regular updates!

I'm sharing today's post over at Handmade Harbour.