Cartography

For a touch of fantasy, note the cyclops pictured in the west (the
middle of the page), and the kingdom of Prester John to the east.

        I love maps.  I love reading them, I love drawing them, I love looking at them as art.  Maybe my love of maps is only to be expected, considering that maps have a long history of overlap with both block printing and fantasy.
        There are so many issues to think about in cartography: the sheer difficulty of making an accurate picture of something that no one can actually see (at least before the invention of aerial photography, anyway); the advances in technology, from compasses and GPS to printing presses and computers, that change how maps are made; the conventions that must be balanced with innovation; the fact that a map is a tool for imparting information of a certain type, and that maps can be completely different depending on what sort of information they're concerned with; how maps are both practical scientific tools and objects of artistic beauty; how maps are supposed to reflect reality and yet so often end up defining it…

        My thoughts here, though, must come back to block prints and fantasy.  Woodcuts were a dominant medium for European maps in the 15th and 16th century, especially in northern Europe.  There's a nice summary of the history of woodcut printed maps in Europe here at mapforum.  Although the development of copper engraving permitted much finer detail and eventually supplanted woodcuts, the wood blocks did have the advantage of being able to be set and printed at the same time as any text on the page, whereas copper plates had to be printed in a separate run through the press.  Some wood blocks were carved with holes or notches in them where the names were to go.  The lettering could then
be printed by fitting moveable type into the holes, allowing not only finer, easier text, but also allowing the same map to be printed for different languages by changing out the type.

        The Japanese were also producing woodblock maps, I think mainly in the 17th-19th centuries, although I couldn't find much information on the history.  There are lots of lovely examples of Japanese woodblock maps posted on the internet, though.

        Early maps of the world are often quite fantastic and largely fictional.  Fantasy maps, by contrast, are often as detailed and precise as possible in order to enhance the illusion that they portray real worlds.  I love maps in fantasy books, not only when they're helpful to follow the story, but also just for the fun of seeing an imaginary place made real.  Through high school my bedroom wall was adorned with maps of many of my favorite fantasy locations (much to my father's annoyance, since he didn't appreciate my spoiling my walls with tape!)

This map has east and west reversed,
an error that has plagued those
looking for Oz consistency ever since.

I was 11 when I made this

map and the book of

which it was a part.

And naturally I loved to draw maps, too.  I was especially given to using an old-fashioned ink pen, and browning the edges of my maps over a candle flame for that satisfyingly ancient look.  (P and T love making maps, too.  Indeed, I think all right-thinking children must draw imaginary maps from time to time!  But I have not yet introduced them to the joys of artificial candleflame aging.)  Of course I put maps in most of my books.  Who wouldn't want maps?  Maps are a wonderful part of the immersion in illusion that makes fantasy so engaging.





[Pictures: map of Africa from Cosmographia by Sebastian Münster, woodcut, c.1556 (image from Altea Gallery);

     map of the world from Universalis Cosmographia by Martin Waldseemüller, wood block print from 12 blocks, 1507 (image from Wikimedia Commons);

     map of Edo or Tokyo, wood block print with hand coloring, 1849, (image provided to Wikimedia Commons by Geographicus Rare Antique Maps);

     map of Middle Earth, pen and ink by J.R.R. Tolkien, mid 20th century;

     map of Earthsea from A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin, map originally drawn by LeGuin, illustrations by Ruth Robbins, 1968;
     map of Oz from Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum, I assume drawn by illustrator John R. Neill, 1914;

     map of Iscamer from Iscamer: The Land of the Iscateers, pen and watercolor by AEGN, 1982;

     map of the part of the Otherworld described in A Threatening of Dragons by AEGN, 2008.]

X Marks the Spot

        One of my all-time favorite poems comes from A Moral Alphabet by Hilaire Belloc (1899). (It's illustrated with line drawings, not block prints, alas!)  It is the verse for the letter X:

     No reasonable little Child expects

     A Grown-Up Man to make a rhyme on X.

               MORAL

     These verses teach a clever child to find

     Excuse for doing all that he's inclined.

        Well, Belloc very cleverly weaseled out of having to find a word to represent X, but most compilers of alphabets can't get away with that.  So let's see what my eight alphabet books illustrated with block prints managed to come up with.

        I'm going to start with the cheaters!  In A Farmer's Alphabet, Mary Azarian uses "aX."  Admittedly, in an alphabet intended for use in school rooms to illustrate the sounds of the letters, as this alphabet is, it does make sense to choose a word in which the X actually makes its characteristic sound.  Still, I always feel that's a bit of a cop-out.  (Azarian chooses "xeriscape" in her Gardener's Alphabet, which is much more sporting.)  Betsy Bowen goes with "eXplore" in Antler, Bear, Canoe, while David Frampton cheats in a different way in My Beastie Book of ABC, by simply making up a word for X: "xog."

        In his ABC Book C.B. Falls uses "xiphius," a scientific name for swordfish.  (I don't really like this particular print, though.)  For my botanical alphabet I used scientific names, too -  X is "xanthium strumarium", the scientific name for cocklebur.  I used scientific names for several plants because many of those names are in common use among gardeners, but when I was
putting together my alphabet of animals I didn't want to use scientific names because they simply aren't commonly familiar.  So after a fair bit of research I discovered "xenops", and I was pretty proud of myself, too.  Then I found Christopher Wormell's Alphabet of Animals, and saw that he used "xenops," too.  In fact, he used "xenops" for both his animal alphabet books, the only animal he had to use twice.  There really aren't a lot of X options… but of course that's the fun of X, isn't it!

          To see the list of alphabet books in question, go to my post The ABC's of Block Printing.

       For variety, in this post I'll link the author/artists' web sites:

Mary Azarian

Betsy Bowen

C. B. Falls 

David Frampton - no web site.  Sorry!
        But here's my post on his work.

Anne Nydam (of course!)

Christopher Wormell

[Pictures:  Xenops, rubber block print by AEGN, from Amazing, Beguiling, Curious, 2010;

     Ax, wood block print by Mary Azarian, from A Farmer's Alphabet, 1981;

     Xeriscape, wood block print with watercolor by Mary Azarian, from A Gardener's Alphabet, 2000;

     Explore, wood block print with watercolor by Betsy Bowen, from Antler, Bear, Canoe, 1991;

     Xiphius, wood block print with multiple blocks by C.B. Falls, from ABC Book, 1923;

     Xanthium strumarium, rubber block print from Botanical Alphabet Poster by AEGN, 2007;

     Xenops, linoleum block print with multiple blocks by Christopher Wormell, from A New Alphabet of Animals, 2002;
     Xog, wood block print with multiple blocks by David Frampton, from My Beastie Book of ABC, 2002.]

Words of the Month - April Foolishness

        At its best, April Fool's Day is a celebration of good-humored nonsense, a chance to shake things up a little and make people laugh.  Apparently no one knows the origins of the tradition, although as usual Wikipedia describes some interesting possibilities.  But whatever the reasons that people celebrate nonsense on the first day of April, I will celebrate in my own way by sharing the strange and wonderful stories of some nonsensical words.  (And don't worry.  Since it isn't actually April 1 yet, I didn't make any of these up!)

hogwash - This word began straighforwardly
     enough in the 15th century as slops fed to
     hogs.  By the early 18th century it had come
     to refer to cheap liquor, and by the end of the
     18th century it meant writing without value.

guff - (1888) a puff of air, which then came to
     mean "empty talk," and thus "nonsense."

baloney - (1922) originally meant "idiot," probably from bologna sausage, which is
     made from all the odds and ends that aren't exactly of the best quality.

gobbledygook - This word was apparently coined by congressman Maury Maverick in
     imitation of a turkey's noise.  It first appeared in 1944 in a memo banning
     "gobbledygook language" in which Maverick threatened that "anyone using the
     words activation or implementation will be shot."  If that threat were actually
     carried out there might be no one left alive in the US over the age of six.

balderdash - (1590s) originally a jumbled mix of liquors.  A century later, under the
     same association of ideas that worked on hogwash, it had come to mean a jumbled
     mix of words.  But no one knows where it came from in the first place.

claptrap - (c.1720-30) a stage term for "a trick to catch applause."  It had extended to
     all "cheap, showy language" by the next century, and thus "nonsense."

poppycock - (mid 19th century) Probably from a Dutch word that combined an older
     Dutch word for "dung" with kak from Latin cacare "to excrete."  I guess they wanted
     to make doubly sure there was no mistaking their intent.
bunkum, or its shortened variant bunk - (1847)  According to the Online Etymology
     Dictionary, "The usual story of its origin is this: At the close of the protracted
     Missouri statehood debates, on Feb. 25, 1820, N.C. Representative Felix Walker
     began what promised to be a "long, dull, irrelevant speech," and he resisted calls to
     cut it short by saying he was bound to say something that could appear in the
     newspapers in the home district and prove he was on the job.  "I shall not be
     speaking to the House," he confessed, "but to Buncombe.""

        I hope these words help you enjoy a little nonsensical Foolishness on April 1.

[Picture: Catch Me!, rubber block print by AEGN, 2007 (sold out).]

A Glimpse of Paradise

        This past Monday I finally finished a print I've been working on for several weeks.  It's one of the most laborious I've done, with all the fiddly little details to carve out.  It was also probably about the longest I've ever spent on an initial sketch, since I wanted to be sure to get the perspective right on all those lines.  It reminded me of learning one point perspective in junior high, wielding my ruler and pencil.  I always enjoyed the geometry of perspective.

        The idea came to me to do a fantasy library, and I went on-line and browsed through lots of pictures of really cool libraries.  I practically had to wipe the drool off my chin as I sat there at the computer!  So my sketch has borrowed bits from various sources.  (At first I really wanted a spiral staircase in the corner.  Someday I will do a spiral staircase print because I just love them, but in the end it didn't fit in this one.)  The basic layout of the view came

from one picture, the orrery from another, the designs for floor, lamp, and all the books came from a variety of other places, and of course it all got filtered through my simplification to translate everything into plain black and white (or, technically, brown and cream).
        (In the picture of the sketch you can see that after I draw the design to my satisfaction, I draw back over all the lines darkly so that the graphite will transfer onto my rubber block.)

        Because people always ask me how long it takes me to make a print and I can never give them an exact answer, I decided to keep track of my time for once.  Of course, I didn't think of this until I'd finished drawing the initial design sketch, and that was several hours already.  However, I did keep track of my time spent carving, and the final result is that it took me nine and a half hours to carve.  That 9 and a half hours were spread over two weeks, so you can see that I didn't work long times at a stretch.  Most days I worked between 45 minutes and an hour and a half, but some days I was able to do only 15 minutes or so.

        After the carving came the printing, and the bigger the block the harder a time I have pulling
prints that are evenly and properly inked.  It took me three printing sessions to get an edition of ten that satisfied me.  Because of this, and because I was mixing brown and black, my edition has a variation in browns.  I also have a couple of pulls that have a mottled look to them.  Ordinarily I would have rejected inking like that, but in this case I thought it was kind of cool.  It seemed to go with the look of an old parchmenty library, so I kept them.  Each time I printed I spent about 45 minutes, adding more than two more hours to the total.

        And finally, after selecting the edition and tearing up the rejects, I labelled, numbered, and signed the prints, and declared myself done.  In fact, the process still has more steps.  I scanned one and made a page for it on my web site, updating all the links and everything there.  I'll still have to mat some, and frame or package them for showing.  But I won't count that time for now.  Leaving the marketing stuff aside, the final tally is that it took me about fourteen hours to make this print.

        I'm pretty pleased with it, on the whole.  I especially like how the open book on the stand turned out, and I certainly had fun with the whole thing.  I'd love to be able to step into this one and spend some time there!  I imagine there's a comfortable chair just around the corner...

[Pictures: A Glimpse of Paradise, rubber block print by AEGN, 2011 (sold out);

photos by AEGN, 2011.]

Why I Chose to Self-Publish

        If you have tears, prepare to shed them now, because I'm going to tell a tragic tale.  (A bit of a long one, too, so go get a cup of tea and make yourself comfortable…)  I always wanted to be a writer.  Pretty much as long as I can remember that's what I wanted to be when I grew up: a fiction writer.  No ballerinas, no doctors, no airplane pilots, no movie stars could entice me like the dream of writing the sorts of books I loved to read.  And write I did.  I participated in a Young Authors' Conference with special guest Stephen Kellogg in elementary school, I won prizes in poetry contests in middle school, I took creative writing classes in high school and college, and I wrote wrote wrote: short stories, poetry, satires, humor, and finally, after graduation from college, full length novels.  I submitted stuff, too, and got an article and a few poems published in small magazines, but what I mostly got was the requisite heap of rejection letters.

        So I did more research.  Where could I submit now?  What was the next step?  That's when I began to come to the realization that publication was not about writing a really good book and sending it to a publisher.  The more I learned about the publishing process the more I came to believe that my chances of even getting noticed, let alone actually published, were practically nil - and moreover, what slim chance there was had little or nothing to do with the actual quality of my writing.  Oh yes, I'd heard about all the great and now-famous books that got rejected by the first twenty-five publishers.  I'd heard about the authors who persevered because they believed in themselves despite all the rejections, and knew that their books were genius that someone someday would properly appreciate.  There was just one problem with these stories: I didn't think that I or my books were works of genius to rival the classics.  I thought my books were pretty good, I knew they were a heck of a lot better than a lot of things I've read that did get published, but… genius to compare with the greatest authors of the ages?  No, I'm not that conceited.

        There I was, certain that I would never be able to get a book published, and it suddenly occurred to me… what was the point of writing?  Writing is about telling stories, about sharing ideas, about making connections, but how can you tell a story when nobody's listening?  I realized that there was no joy in writing what no one would ever read.  It was too pathetic, like talking on the telephone even after you know the other person has hung up.  I stopped writing.  I stayed busy with my teaching and art, and then I had twin babies that didn't leave me much time for anything else anyway…

        Are you crying now?  Tragic, isn't it.  But don't worry.  I love happy endings, so this tale will not remain an unrelieved tragedy.  Fast forward maybe five or eight years and three things had happened.  The first is that my art career had begun to feel really satisfying.  I knew my art was never going to get acclaimed as the next hot thing in glossy magazines; I knew fancy New York City galleries were not going to be clamoring to represent me; but something small but very significant was occurring.  When I displayed my art, when people got a chance to see it, they liked it.  Many of them liked my block prints enough to put down money and buy them.  It didn't matter that I wasn't going to be critically acclaimed, because I could skip the critics and galleries and the art establishment and share my art directly with people, and that brought a lot of joy both to them and to me.

        The second thing that was happening is that I was really missing writing.  Writing had been one of the things that had given me the most pleasure, it had been one of the most important parts of my life, and I wanted it back.  I finally made a resolution that I would forget about publishing, and try to forget that no one would ever read what I wrote, and I would try to enjoy it just for myself.  Slowly, laboriously, because I was woefully rusty, I started to get back to work on old unfinished projects.

        And then I discovered the third piece of the puzzle: self-publishing technology had come a long way since Beatrix Potter and James Joyce self-published.  I put all the profit from my art sales into publishing a book of nursery rhymes illustrated with my block prints, and I brought it to my art shows to sell.  No agent, no publisher, no bookstore, but when I could show the book to people and they could look at it, they liked it.  And many of them handed over money and bought it.  A few years after that and the technology of print-on-demand had come even farther, and lulu and createspace had appeared on the scene.  I thought, "Why shouldn't there be a place for my books in the same way I discovered that there was a place for my art?  I may never get an agent or a publisher, but if I could just show my books to people and give them a chance to read, they just might like them."  And that's what I've tried to do.

        There are drawbacks to this method, of course.  I've never received that "seal of approval" that a publishing contract provides.  No one in the industry considers me a real author, and I can't be a member of the professional writers' organizations.  I've not had the benefit of a good professional editor to help me polish my books further (although this could be a blessing as well as a curse, considering the horror stories I've heard of editors who've told friends and friends of friends, "We love this book… now we just need you to change the set-up, the ending, the main character, and your entire point!")  I'm not on the approved purchase lists of many libraries, nor am I eligible to get reviews by the respected reviewers.  Convincing people to give my books a try is not easy, and there's no one to do it but me (and if being a writer was the one thing I always most wanted to do, then sales and marketing is pretty much the one thing I've always least wanted to do.  I was a truly abysmal Girl Scout come cookie time each year.)  Everyone knows that there are a lot of really awful books that are self-published, so I don't blame anyone for being a little wary of mine (although I would ask you to remember how many really awful books are published by large conventional publishers, too!)  I'm still trying to figure out how to make this work, but…

        But when people read my books, they like them.  Not everyone, of course, but many of them.  And many of them like my books enough to put down money and buy them, and give them as gifts to their nieces and nephews and children and grandchildren and friends… or just enjoy them themselves.  So I'm a writer again, telling my stories, connecting with people.  It's true that there aren't huge numbers of people reading my books, but no matter how few there are, as long as there's someone listening it's always worth it to share a story.  So while I still have the occasional fantasy of being "discovered" by some wonderful agent or publisher and getting my work distributed more widely, I'm just really grateful that self-publishing has made it possible for me to write again, and to share my writing with others, just as I share my art.

[Pictures:  Six Masks, rubber block prints by AEGN, 1999:
Joy, Rage, Misery, Excitement, Jealousy, Love.]

The ABC's of Block Printing

       Recently I've been having fun with Inter-library Loan, and requesting every alphabet book I could find that's illustrated with block prints.  I came up with a pretty good crop of them, too.  I've always loved alphabet lists - on long car trips or in the dark at sleepovers I enjoyed playing "I love my love with an A."  (His name is

Ambrose, he lives in Albuquerque, he likes to eat artichokes, and he has a pet aardvark.  I love my love with a B, her name is Blanche…)  So it was only natural that once I had done a number of prints of plants I should see how well they could be assigned to the letters of the alphabet.  And when I realized I was missing representation for only half a dozen more letters, it was only natural that I should carve and print those last few plants…  (Botanical Alphabet Poster)  A few years later I did the same with animals, and these I compiled into the book Amazing, Beguiling, Curious.

        Not only are there a number of great alphabet books illustrated with relief block prints, but animals are an especially popular topic, too.  I've been enjoying comparing the word choices for each letter, and how different artists portrayed the same word in their different ways.  There's enough block-printy goodness in this topic to last me for several posts, so for today I'll just direct you to the eight alphabet books I got my hands on, and the beautiful and varied work of the different artists.

      A Farmer's Alphabet, by Mary Azarian, published by David. R. Godine, 1981.

      A Gardener's Alphabet,  by Mary Azarian, published by Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

      Antler, Bear, Canoe: A Northwoods Alphabet, by Betsy Bowen, published by Houghton Mifflin, 1991.

      ABC Book, by C. B. Falls, published by Doubleday & Company, 1923.

      My Beastie Book of ABC, by David Frampton, published by HarperCollins, 2002.  (For more on David Frampton, check out my post on his work.)

      Amazing, Beguiling, Curious: 26 Fascinating Creatures, by Anne E.G. Nydam, published by Nydam Prints, 2010.

      An Alphabet of Animals, by Christopher Wormell, published by Dial Books, 1990.

      A New Alphabet of Animals, by Christopher Wormell, published by Running Press, 2002.

        By the way, if you know of any other alphabet books illustrated with relief block printing, please let me know about them!  I'd always love to see more.

[Pictures: Armadillo, wood block print by AEGN, from Amazing, Beguiling, Curious, 2010;

        Barn, wood block print by Mary Azarian, from A Farmer's Alphabet, 1981;

        Camel, linoleum block print with multiple blocks by Christopher Wormell, from A New Alphabet of Animals, 2002;

        Frog, linoleum block print with multiple blocks by Christopher Wormell, from An Alphabet of Animals, 1990;

        Quiet, wood block print with watercolor by Betsy Bowen, from Antler, Bear, Canoe, 1991;
        Swan, wood block print with multiple blocks by C.B. Falls, from ABC Book, 1923;

        Underground, wood block print with watercolor by Mary Azarian, from A Gardener's Alphabet, 2000;

        Warthog, wood block print with multiple blocks by David Frampton, from My Beastie Book of ABC, 2002.]