Let’s Make a Map!

dannygregory6 Comments

I just love maps — looking at them and making them too.  I started making them as a kid, and my journals (especially the travel ones) are full of maps. They’re a great way to tell a story graphically, even the ones I made up out of my imagination. And they have so many uses, from giving directions to a house guest, to recording my personal history, to recreating memories, to recording a trip to charting the geography of a novel, to figuring out the most efficient way to tackle my list of chores.

Recently, I worked with my friend Nate Padavick, one of the world’s great map makers, on Let’s Make a Map!, a great new kourse at SketchBook Skool.

We filmed it in his gorgeous studio and all around the Mission district of San Francisco and we even used a drone (an SBS first!). Nate is a great teacher and he breaks down the process of making a map into simple fun steps, then gives oodles of inspiration. It’s a short kourse, just a week long, and it’s affordably priced ($29), and by the end, you’ll have made your first map and be eager to make loads more.

Nate is a lovely man, a great illustrator, and he knows SO much about maps. He’s also the curator of two great web site: They Draw and Travel and They Draw and Cook. You must check them out…. after you sign up for Let’s Make  A Map.

 

Dear Diary…..

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I love old diaries and in this week’s SB Club video, I share a few of my favorite and most boring ones.

A Springular pep talk

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Spring is here. Nature’s making stuff. So should you.

Here’s a pep talk to motivate you.

Help me to help you.

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Will you do me (and yourself) a GINORMOUS favor?

At SketchBook Skool, we make a lot of videos, on average one a day — tips, reviews, interviews, jokes. We share them all on YouTube.

Now, if we get 2,190 additional subscribers to our channel, YouTube will help us produce even more and better stuff. But we need to cross that threshold.

Will you help us by SUBSCRIBING (ask your pals and family too!) to our YouTube Channel? It’s here.

It just takes one click. You won’t get any annoying emails about it. It’ll help us BIG time.

Sketchbook Club: A Year in Japan

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This week I pore over a book I have treasured for years, A Year in Japan by Kate T. Williamson. A stellar example of the travel journal, of design, lettering, and watercolor. I hope you enjoy it as I did.

Study Hall: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

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I love this week’s klass in Exploring with one of my idols, Felix Scheinberger. I made a bit of a mess with my homework but then was inspired by an old spaghetti Western. I hope you had fun with your assignment.

SketchBook Club: David Gentleman

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This has been a rough week. I was confined to bed by a brutal cold but had to rise from it to take my dogs to the vet for teeth cleaning which led to Poor Tim having ten teeth pulled. So now we are all lying about in our baskets feeling sorry for each other and ourselves.

Despite all this infirmity, I hosted this week’s meeting of the Sketchbook Club to discuss the work of David Gentleman, an amazing British artist, little known on this side of the pond but a treasure at home.

I have learned a great deal from the many Gentleman books in my library. His design, his technique, his wit and insight are impossible for me to fully emulate but it’s nice to have a distant gleaming point on the horizon to aim for.

If you’d like to add any of these books to your own shelves, these are the ones I discuss with links to where you can them. All by David Gentleman:

Alas, David Gentleman doesn’t teach at Sketchbook Skool, but this is what it might be like if he did:

 

My new movie: The Art of A Fan

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A few years ago, I had great fun making a series of Sketchbook Films with my old pal and genius, Tommy Kane. After bugging him for months, I finally got Tom to join me in making a brand-new film about Marcy Singer.

I first met Marcy when I taught a class at the Open Center in New York and apparently I gave her an idea that led to an enormous project. I said, “why not draw while you watch TV? Just use the DVR to freeze the frame and sketch what’s on the screen.”

An ardent hockey fan, she decided to draw every single game the NY Rangers play and has now filled many sketchbook with wonderful drawings and watercolors. It’s a great story about how drawing changes how you see things and deepens your experience and your passion.

Sketchbook Club #2: d.price

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We convened another meeting of the Club to discuss the work of one Dan Price of Joseph, OR. He was one of my earliest and greatest mentors.

Some notes: 

Moonlight Chronicle back issues: http://www.moonlightchronicles.com/issues.html
I see that on this site Dan said he doesn’t have back issues in print anymore but will be making e-versions of them. If you email him and bug him, maybe he’ll pull some out of the attic. It’s worth a shot. Otherwise, you’ll have to make do with his books — which are pretty awesome too.

Books:
Moonlight Chronicles: http://amzn.to/2oXK9mU
How to Make a Journal of Your Life: http://amzn.to/2oXFstp
Radical Simplicity: http://amzn.to/2qhFZdj
Learn about his simple life in this film about d.price: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdLAM-wChxY