Memphis

This Memphis map was a tough one! Appropriate for a tough city. My wife and I started dating long-distance while she still lived in Memphis and I wanted to make this map to celebrate the amazing scene the Mississippi makes against downtown. I especially wanted to include the Memphis Pyramid because it’s such a delightful nod to the city name and has such a big imprint on the waterfront.

This map was my first where a major mistake hung me up. I start it in May of 2023 and didn’t finish until 2025. The original version had a map compass in the middle of the river, upstream the De Soto Bridge. I hated how it looked, so I tried to color over it and made an even more horrendous compass. I never took any pictures of the horror.

2 years passed.

I cut the all the water sections out of the maps with an x-acto knife, glued the flimsy hole-ridden map onto another sheet of watercolor paper, and then painted in water down in the new recess. Better than if I had planned it that way from the beginning!