Monday, March 21, 2011

Geomorphically "Correct" Art, Part Two

Steve Gough over at Riparian Rap has an ongoing series of geomorphically "incorrect" artwork. In that vein, I'm producing some maps for my pal Kelly McCullough's new book series (coming out in December BTW).

I thought I'd share some of the maps. It's fun playing "what if" in terms of landscape geology. Plus, it gives me a chance to exercise my drawing skills:
BrokenBladeMapFixed-SMALL(click to embiggen)

Here's the "world" map - the biggest challenge was keeping the countries and cities in the same location relative to each other (determined by the author), while portraying the geomorphic features in a reasonably accurate fashion. That involved placing the rivers in patterns that showed proper downstream morphologies and drainage patterns, coastal features that reflected some river/shoreline processes, and adding a different kind of "mountain" range to the northwestern area of the map. I thought placing some Karst towers would be something different, compared to the mountains that are usually drawn.

20110320b_TienCity(click to embiggen)

The city map (in progress), has to balance a sense of urban development history (old neighborhoods, new ones springing up and gentrified areas) superimposed onto a landscape that had some plot-relevant hills. I placed some neighborhoods on river terraces to to justify the higher hill tops (left behind as the river eroded downward).

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