ANOTHER DUSTY, USELESS TALENT
DRAWN TO MAPS
December 27, 2006 - One of my little secrets is my love for maps.  I've always been drawn to them, even at an early age.  I remember the first time I drew the outline of the United States - a small sort of draw off between my parents and siblings when I was about six years old.  I used a TV Guide as a drawing board and remember impressing my parents.  That may have been paternal love, or a legitimate expression at the time, either way I'll probably never know. 

Since those days, I've been fortunate enough to travel across the country and Europe a few times, by plane, train and automobile, and always travel on a whim and a shoestring.  So I've been accustomed to reading and following maps, and somehow, my little brain is able to absorb the information well enough I can reproduce most maps after just a couple of viewings.  

In the last month, I was asked to draw the shape of California for a friend.  Grabbing a pen, I drew the state on a wall outside my studio, and the next thing you know, I'm drawing 49 other states and then topped it off with a respectable version of Europe.  Later in the week I still had the bug in me and drew a second map, on a piece of paper I was able to scan for all to see.  So here's a quick sketch I did of the United States, using no references whatsoever.  Nevada and Illinois are a bit too long, West Virginia a bit too nebulous, and those are fairly lame attempts at Ohio, Vermont and New Hampshire, so I'll give the effort a solid C+: