So.....here we have it -- the secret life of the artist or it could be called "Things you do as an artist that you never thought you'd be doing" as an artist. The funny thing is: I don't even remember the project I was working on when I did the South America map. I think it went to a filmstrip project ("filmstrip" what's that? Most people now have no idea what that was.) The South America map was done with acrylics on an illustration board. Acrylics, I hate thee, let me count the ways. Did I ever mention how much I hate acrylic paints? Now I even teach painting with them ---- see? another instance of "things you do as an artist that you never thought you'd be doing." This may have been for a series of educational films on the explorers of the New World. The second map -- Europe -- I did for a film about Acid Rain. That was a big subject in the 1980s before Global Warming took the stage. This was an animated scene where I had to devise a cloud blowing over the earth carrying acids to drop over the land mass below. Animation --- another "things you do as an artist that you never thought you'd be doing." I could easily segue into a series of that along with the Secret Life of the Artist. What comes after that? -- you ask. After that I was a Waldorf teacher who had to do maps of all the continents and islands and states of the US. I did them teaching geography to the students. I used chalk on a large blackboard, which the students drew in their lesson books. Then they were erased --- yes, erased and I have no pictures of them (sadly)....and by the way....the South America was photographed top lit. The Europe map was shot bottom lit, which gives it a luminous quality kind of like a slide --- the difference between them is like the difference between a photographic print and a slide.
