Making More Maps

When the kids stumble upon art from a few months/years ago, it often sparks new ideas. We might find something interesting when cleaning up, or they notice the art when I'm dividing it into their archival boxes. We keep a random assortment (seleted by the kids) in the kitchen, taped to doors, but they notice novel pieces that they'd forgotten more than the art on display. Not surprisingly, my kids definitely get more into an activity they discover or suggest.

Spurred by looking at the maps they developed last summer, the girls embarked on another map making mission. My older daughter asked me to tape four pieces of paper (we used heavy cardsock) together so that she could make a map. When the younger daughter spied the action, she asked for her own 4-page canvas. They were so focused on their drawings that I was able to make progress on my latest doodle.

My younger daughter started making a map of Amsterdam, with lanes for walking, bicycles, trams, cars... all at various angles. She then altered the map into an imaginary city. My older daughter started in colored pencil and expanded the details of her imaginary city in magic marker. She named the buildings and gave them a 3D look..

Kids love to invent and draw, so making maps of an imaginary city,  island or planet is a fun and creative exercise. In drawing a map, they naturally think about perspective, the way that streets meet one another, congruency, naming conventions, relative size, what things are in their city, a theme (say, all streets named for candies), logical features, and more.

More good stuff...

• Flickr artist Miss KoolAid shares a drawing developed for a mapping challenge.
• I used a map as the first layer of this art journal background