Kashgar: A Portolan Chart

[aeshnidae]

Kashgar...the near mythical land of silks and spices, a land of brightly-feathered birds that could mimic the strange, melodic language spoken by the beautiful, dark-eyed Kashgarian men and women...a land with a lush, deeply green interior said to hide a magical lake of the purest blue at its center, a fountain of youth and vigor...a land said to be home to magical creatures called djinn. Quinn grew up among fishermen on the coast; as a child she soaked in the tales of Kashgar spun by Duscan sailors who visited the fish markets. Most of those were tall tales, of course. The voyage to Kashgar's royal city of Dushan was dangerous even for the most seasoned of Duscany's sailors, and only the Royal Dushani Spice Company's most established captains were trusted with the navigation charts showing the waterways that would carry them safely into Dushan's harbor. Quinn once caught a glimpse of those charts, quite by accident but she studied it intently for those brief seconds. She did not know the entire route, but she knew where to wait and watch, and then slip in behind a Duscan ship headed for Kashgar. After years of preparation, Quinn, accompanied her twin brother and their three closest friends, steered the Errant Venture into a cove to await the passage of the Royal Dushani Spice Company ship that should be rounding The Reach before daybreak. Prior to leaving Hope's Bay, they each made sure to settle up any outstanding debts and say anything that needed to be said. Quinn and her companions were optimistic, but also realistic. They felt well prepared to undertake the dangerous voyage, but also knew it may be their last.

My completed map for the May/June 2018 Lite Challenge, “the Fast, Free and Crazy” with the additional instruction to “map a dangerous place” (for those who wanted a bit more guidance). This map was inspired by the portolan charts in the Ottoman "Book on Navigation," published circa 1525. Most of the maps use swooping, craggy coastlines to show all of the coves and other areas to shelter a ship (my coastlines are less craggy). The mountains are often strangely situated and colorful, which I tried to faithfully recreate. Most of the maps also use gold leaf, which I've captured here thanks to an open license photo of a gold bar. I drew the map in Photoshop using a Wacom Intuous tablet. The font is Aceh Darusalam, also open license, available at dafont.com. The paper background is an image of a blank page from the Book on Navigation available in the Walters Art Gallery's online collection, which I edited in Photoshop.

WIP thread is here.

Kashgar v10 (sm).jpg

[Ilanthar]

Nice one, aeshnidae . The buildings & cities are especially great.

[aeshnidae]

Thanks, Ilanthar! The cities took up the bulk of my time; it's still challenging for me to draw "real things" so I'm glad they turned out well!

[OldEarth]

The gold-leaf effect works really, really well!

I love the style of this one, the colourful mountain/hills are really, really beautiful too.

That's such a great inspiration pull!

[Tenia]

Great Portolan aeshnidae, I love portolans

[aeshnidae]

The gold-leaf effect works really, really well!

I love the style of this one, the colourful mountain/hills are really, really beautiful too.

That's such a great inspiration pull!

Thank you, OldEarth! I stumbled across the Book on Navigation when I fell down the rabbit hole of internet research. I was really taken with the style of mountains. I love mountains, having lived near the Rockies for quite a while, but this was the first time I'd seen mountains rendered in this fashion.

Great Portolan aeshnidae, I love portolans

Thanks, Tenia! I was really taken with the unique look of them. Just yesterday I stumbled across a Big Think article about a Dutch doctoral dissertation about portolans, which posits that they were too accurate to have been made by medieval sources and were likely made using techniques copied from antiquity, which means that the Mercator projection may have been around centuries its namesake invented (or reinvented) it. Unfortunately the dissertation is in Dutch, so I can't read it.

[ChickPea]

I loved the style of this one. Great work.

[ThomasR]

Sticking to a historically accurate style is not easy and you did it like a chief ! Beautiful work and kudos for the golds

[MistyBeee]

I'm hardly working on a historic style for a commission those days and I can confirm how difficult it is to reproduce the feeling of those styles, so congrats, Aeshnidae !!

[aeshnidae]

Thanks ChickPea, Thomas, and Misty! I've learned quite a bit from all of you, and I'm glad I was able to put some new knowledge into practice.