Lately I’ve been trying to examine what’s successful in my spindly, narrative maps and apply it to an approach that has more color and rhythm. I’ve done a lot of tiny sketches in my watercolor sketchbook; the hard part will be translating them to a larger scale.
In chronological order:
(this is for map004):
Haza-Neylor Kaisaro looked out her window at the green thoroughfares where there would have been streets, the vapor from her hot tea cascading through her nostrils quite pungently. Slykesforough’s organic deurbanization was unexpected: some exceptionally aggressive asphalt eating grasses had been introduced into the central region of Slykesforough. She remembered reading about the embittered group of scientists in the Skarmany province who concocted such grasses in the first place, as well as the controversies which sprang between the Masumaero Urbanists and the Cityists and some of the scientists. That was all over two hundred star-endizzyments ago. And these days, the polity-governance of Slykesforough hadn’t actually minded all that much, and neither had the people.
Haza-Neylor Kaisaro reflected that if she’d not moved from Baratandale to Slykesforough some fifteen star-endizzyments ago, she wouldn’t be seeing cute bunnies hopping in the green. Baratandale was a concrete, glass, and plastic city, and after so many years dealing with massive volumes of information in some artificial information-transformation environment, Haza-Neylor had had enough. She’d started a combined flower sales/apothecary in the Beuvahbhe pentagon just beneath her apartment and when the grasses started eating the streets she hooted and hollered for days and accidentally snorted her soup. She’d grown up in Mavakhrine, with its infinite seas of green, and having them return (in one way or another) felt perfect.