Earlier this month, I posted on the map I created from the sketch I made while spending the afternoon outside. While those outside activities have had to be curtailed due to a stretch of uncomfortably hot weather (to anybody from the south this is going to sound silly, but it's been in the mid-80s [~30°C] for the past 2 weeks) I've continued creating maps of places both fictional and real.
This was done in black pen on a 5" x 8" Rhodia pad. It's some of the best paper for fine pen work, though if you're sloppy, it can sometimes smear a little. I scanned it in and colored it digitally to simulate a 3-color printing process. The area is loosely based on northwestern Michigan.
This map was created in the same way as the previous one, except it was based on central Nova Scotia. I used Sakura Micron pens for these two. Click to enlarge.
And this is a full-color (9 colors, to be exact) map of southwest Michigan, done with Sakura Micron (black) and Marvy Le Pen (colors). It's accurate for driving with and nothing on it is fictional, unlike with the others. Errors are therefore less forgiving because I can't just imagine a road or a differently-named city.
This gif shows the process of creating a black and white map of a fictional place.
1. Sketched out the coastline and major cities, and connected those with main roads and added small towns and county borders.
2. Added minor roads and sketched the names for major cities. Added highway shields to main roads.
3. Inked main roads and highway shields, adding road numbers.
4.
Inked major city names and filled in the main road patterns denoting
highway surface. (you'll notice here that I smeared the ink on the
highway above White Cloud, the first error I made)
5. Inked small
town names, then the coastline and water features. (my second mistake
was inking a minor road near White Cloud as a river)
6. Added
decorative lines to coastline and lakes, and inked county lines. Fixed
both mistakes by turning the smudge into a minor road and re-routing the
river. (this is why I like creating fictional maps based on reality
rather than maps of real places!)
7. Inked minor roads, added hills, and added compass and title. Erased pencil sketch.
8. Scanned and colored digitally.
I just got this new old stock Berol RapiDesign general mapping stencil which will help out a lot!
30 Jun 2015
27 Jun 2015
Three kinds of Remington Mark II
The Remington Mark II was a Torpedo 18b (or 18s) in a plastic shell rebranded for the American market. To my knowledge, it exists in three versions, spanning 3 to 5 years of production (if it went from 1964 to 1968). They all come in an oddly Olympia-like case made in West Germany and have annoying Remington core spools.
The first date, 1965, is a guess. The two later Mark IIs have been dated from the date stamp inside the ribbon cover. This post compares a few points showing the changes in the exterior finish and the change from Remington Rand to Remington and finally to Sperry Rand as the manufacturer.
1965? - 1345954 (West Germany) |
September 1966 - 819493 (West Germany) |
August 1967 - 1377313 ("Holland") |
I would like to thank my friend Scott for letting me use his camera to photograph his two Mark IIs.
25 Jun 2015
Us and them
from Estonian SSR to Estonia |
I think Russians are seen as the oppressors and my "wanting the country to themselves" bit is not truly accurate. They don't want Estonia to themselves so much as they don't want to have to share it with historical oppressors, and are therefore oppressing people for what their ancestors and government did.
Sent from my Speedwriter
Labels:
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23 Jun 2015
Roads to the Factories: International Typewriter Day 2015
This year for International Typewriter Day I thought it would be fitting to make an internationally-themed blog post in celebration. Happy 147th birthday, first patent of Sholes!
I've chosen 43 of the most important and well-known typewriter factories around the world corresponding to typewriters I've owned (with the exception of 5) and found in my road map collection a map of the area around each of the factories from the same era as the typewriter.
Now, you won't be able to pick out the exact locations of the factories (I don't even think we know the street addresses of several of these) but you'll be able to get an idea of the landscape the factory is set in. As you may have noticed before, a surprising number of typewriter factories were located in small towns a fair distance away from main roads. (of course, rail access would have been most important).
I've placed the map and city name first, then followed by a photo of the typewriter built there around the time of the map's printing so you can play a guessing game if you like.*
Note that I am not 100% sure on a couple of these, but I have made my best guess.
Frankfurt
Adler
Kaufbeuren
Alpina
Nagoya
Brother
Brno
Consul
Chemnitz
Continental
West Bromwich
Empire
Dresden
Erika
Milano
Everest
Åtvidaberg
Facit
Markersdorf
Groma
Svängsta
Halda
Yverdon
Hermes
Leicester
Imperial
Hull
Imperial
Beaucourt
Japy
Syracuse
L C Smith
Radom
Łucznik
Plovdiv
Maritsa
Zella-Mehlis
Mercedes
Moskva
Woodstock
Oliver
Ivrea
Olivetti
Barcelona
Olivetti (Spain)
Glasgow
Olivetti (UK)
Ciudad de Mexico
Olivetti (Mexico)
Wilhelmshaven
Olympia
Erfurt
Optima
Augsburg
Princess
Ilion
Remington
Sömmerda
Rheinmetall
Cuijk
Royal (Diana)
Leiden
Royal (Royalite)
Hartford
Royal
Groton, Cortland
Smith-Corona
Toronto
Smith-Corona (Canada)
Murgenthal
Swissa
Frankfurt
Torpedo
Nürnberg
Triumph
Hartford
Underwood
Toronto
Underwood (Canada)
UNIS
Wuppertal
Voss
Happy International Typewriter Day 2015!
Sources of the photos not in my collection:
http://typewriterdatabase.com/198x-olivetti-lettera-15.3779.typewriter
http://typewriterdatabase.com/195x-olivetti-lettera-22.3617.typewriter
http://typewriterdatabase.com/late-1960searly-1970-maritsa-11.2945.typewriter
http://typewriterdatabase.com/1963-eatons-smithcorona-prestige.3965.typewriter
http://oztypewriter.blogspot.com/2012/02/yugoslavian-typewriter.html
*of course, they're in alphabetical order by brand name...
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