When it comes to photography and art, the team at APC is in the lucky position to see a lot of head-turning works. And every now and then, along comes a project that’s just totally “outside the box.” This particular canvas print fits that description and then some. With the permission of it’s creator – the fabulously creative Amanda Kern – we’re reprinting her 2009 account of the creative process that led to one amazing canvas.
By Amanda Kern, Photographer & Graphic Designer
Earlier this year I discovered I’d have the opportunity to display some work in Valencia’s faculty graphic arts exhibition. The theme for this year’s art exhibition just happened to be “self portraits squared.” I spent a lot of time brainstorming ideas and came to the conclusion that creating a “mindmap” would be a perfect solution. I attribute the fact that my mind tends to think of most things lately in mindmap form to the time I spent training with O’Reilly. Ever since that experience, I suppose you could say I’ve been corrupted by intertwining thoughts on paper. In the past I’ve been known to mindmap for personal ideas and training, as well as research papers [1] [2].
After over 60+ hours of work this past week I am quite thrilled to finally share the process I’ve taken to complete my mindmap project which I’ve dubbed, “The Map to Mind.” Here’s a screenshot of the project:
Insight Into My Process
When I first began this project I envisioned this project ending up similar to my very first 365 photo, just a little more complex and better planned out. I designed the project at 24″ x 24″ and began using InDesign to set my type in small sections. My hopes were that some aspects were hand rendered, yet still resembled some of the qualities in the original fonts used. As I worked I would print out small sheets at a time and would use a pencil rubbed against the back of the print out to act as a “transfer” as I traced each of the letters to maintain similar qualities to the original font used, just hand rendered. This became a tedious process – setting type on the computer, transferring in pencil and then drawing the letters with ink. Other things I chose to just scribble my own chicken scratch. Every time I’d create new type I’d photomontage the type using Photoshop. After I got far enough along, I printed out parts of the project and added my own writing to the project. After a day or two my hand was ready to fall off! Here’s a screenshot of many of the words I hand rendered along with printouts.
