The BLUE Prussian: Maps

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Maps

Okay, so I have now left myself a week's deadline to do my research for the 24/7 prayer room my church is setting up. I have had a couple of months to do this and I thought it would be easy, but I think I may have been wrong! Surprise surprise. So, we are looking at God's heart and his heart connecting with us. Obviously people are all over the globe so we ended up discussing maps as part of the set up and people being inspired to pray for things in their home countries or for people they know in other places or troubled zones. So I volunteered to paint maps of the world, one side the globe and the other Scotland and specifically Edinburgh. But the challenge is to make the maps representational, but not specific, and inspiring I think for both children and adults alike. On a personal level, I am quite inspired by ancient maps. Of course, ancient maps don't have Australia on, so while my American flatmate doesn't think this is a problem, I do! I also like the idea of painting some specific pictures on to make it interesting for children, like the ancient ships they would include in the maps or sea dragons or something. This is probably way too complicated, but it is best challenge than to take the easy route I think. I have ordered a map book Antique Maps by Carl Moreland but that won't be here for a couple of days, so I have found some initial maps on the internet and tried converting a Satellite Google Map in Photoshop using dark strokes - to give the idea of the roads, but without the need to paint specific buildings for the Edinburgh. If I post the starting point here it will hopefully mean I might have some revelation in the night about how to push it on further! I also found that the National Library of Scotland has maps of Scotland from about 1600 onwards available to order and view online which is good to know.