For the past several years, I've enjoyed the process of cyanotype printing, and have released a number of projects based on this technique (including my favorite item I've ever made). Now, I've decided to take my recent work in developing terrain sketches, and turn it into a new series of prints. For this, though, I … Continue reading Kickstarter 3: The Return
A Free eBook of Terrain Lines
Friends, earlier this week I mentioned that I'd completed a whole bunch of terrain sketches using some novel techniques that allowed me to create a hachure drawing style from digital elevation data. If you'd like to see the whole set, I've now assembled them into a quick eBook for your perusing. Click the image below … Continue reading A Free eBook of Terrain Lines
A New Take on an Old Style
Gentle readers, I have some exciting things to share with you. After several months of tinkering and toolmaking, I have created a series of posters of iconic peaks (and other terrain), illustrated in a sketch style inspired by old hachure drawings. There are 37 designs to choose from, and I hope you'll browse through. And, … Continue reading A New Take on an Old Style
2024 Freelance Rate Survey Results
Thank you once again to everyone who participated in this year’s survey of freelance cartographer rates and business practices! Our apologies for the delay in posting the results; life has been busy for both Aly and myself. Before we get to the survey results, here are some handy links to take you to the previous … Continue reading 2024 Freelance Rate Survey Results
Automated Hachuring in QGIS
I seem to have accidentally come up with a method for duplicating a centuries-old terrain representation technique. From a 30m DEM of Churfirsten, Switzerland. If you've looked at old maps, you've probably seen hachures: lines that run up and down along the slope of terrain features. There were a wide variety of approaches to doing … Continue reading Automated Hachuring in QGIS
My Decade with Blender
It occurs to me that I have been Blendering for a long time. In fact, it's been almost exactly a decade since I gave my first public presentation on the technique of generating shaded relief using Blender. And in that time, the method has been adopted far more widely than I could have ever anticipated … Continue reading My Decade with Blender
Take the 2024 Freelance Mapper Survey
Friends and colleagues, it's time once again for the survey that Aly Ollivierre and I conduct every two years. We ask people who do freelance mapping work about their fees and other business practices, in order to help bring more transparency to our little niche of the world, and empower our fellow freelancers to better … Continue reading Take the 2024 Freelance Mapper Survey
Another Atlas of Minor Projects
A few years ago, I compiled a PDF of various small odds-and-ends mapping projects that I'd done. Now, I've done it again. Please enjoy Another Atlas of Minor Projects, which houses a few dozen cartographic items that needed a home. DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE ATLAS These are all small, mostly-quick projects that never really merited their … Continue reading Another Atlas of Minor Projects
On the Practice of Wobbling
We live in an era in which maps (and plenty of other graphics) are made with digital tools. Workflows vary, but the end result is that a lot of us base our cartography entirely on clean vector shapes and neat raster grids. For example, I talked earlier this year about a map I made of … Continue reading On the Practice of Wobbling
Challenging the Idea of a Bad Map
We're just a couple of weeks away from the 30 Day Map Challenge, an annual celebration of cartographic creativity. I know some of you are already brainstorming about what you might do this year. Each day has a prompt, and you're encouraged to make a map that day that is based on the prompt. Here's … Continue reading Challenging the Idea of a Bad Map
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