A/N: This was copied from my blog, thus the lack of appropriate punctuation. My personal grammatical ideologies and or failings are in no way representative of the views or practices of Tangerine Tree Press.
people are complaining that my last posts on the alchemy map didn't really demonstrate where i'm going with it. which is fair enough. it probably has something to do with the fact that i'm all little fuzzy on the point myself.
i have these fabulous period zodiac symbols that marianne and andrew pfeiffer are kindly allowing us to use and which i'm hoping to incorporate into a decorative border for the map. they're very vividly coloured and very vibrant and i'm hoping to bring a lot of that visual energy to the map, although i've no hope of doing anything half as nice as the pfeiffer's cloisonne (which is just mind-blowingly gorgeous as you can see).
beyond that my inspiration is coming from the braille/tactile maps used by aurelie in the alchemy of chance and from those lovely but hideously inaccurate historical maps like the munster map. see, history was good for something.
so while the tactile element is most relevant to the story and most interesting to me (i'm really fascinated with multi-sensory experiences) i'm trying to make this map as visually exciting as possible too (mostly because i expect to use a photo of it more than the original, sadface).
and here's one of the zodiac signs, leo of course. image © marianne and andrew pfeiffer, photograph © pearse saines.
