Tuesday, December 13, 2011

tuesday

Hello, blog. How are you today? I'm doing fairly well, thank you. Just wondering where our second day of rain is. The weather man told us we would get two days of rain, which is a big deal for us parched Angelenos. Yesterday was perfect. I sat next to my big window and drew all day with the rain falling outside; it was magical.
I'm pretty happy that I get to draw my favorite things for this current project I'm working on. That would be Maps!

I had an "emergency" trip to NYC last week and started this incredible book on the plane - The Fourth Part of the World, by Toby Lester. All those pieces of Medieval history that seem so vague and were never really delved into in school (Marco Polo, Amerigo Vespucci, the Black Plague, Genghis Khan, etc), this book weaves them all together through the story of maps.

Lester started the investigation and book when a map from 1507 sold for more than the US Declaration of Independence at an auction. What was the map? The Waldseemuller Map, the first map of the entire world including the continents of North and South America, and the first map to name America (sorry Columbus, snooze you lose).