We are the world

My mom needed a large world map showing country divisions but without country names and had asked me if I could draw one for her. I found a political map on wiki and took it home. She had told me back at the end of January that she needed this for the beginning of March. Naturally, I did it on March 1. Truth be told, she didn’t get me the paper size until mid-February so I didn’t procrastinate all that much.
I had picked up a small opaque projector from Michaels years ago. The only other thing I’ve really used it for was upsizing a Ghostbusters logo to use as a pattern for hand-stitching the logos and that was over 6 years ago. I first came across these in elementary school – using the camera obscura principle to enlarge pictures in books on the wall to trace.

The map I was using was quite small for the size I needed it – it almost would have easier to draw it freehand but I figured I’d give it a try. In looking at the projector, I noticed that it was rated up to a 75 watt bulb. It had a 60 watt in there now. I’m wondering if, now that we have the compact fluorescents, I can put a brighter (and cooler) bulb in there for a sharper picture.



I was only able to upsize a quarter of the map at a time. I had to keep moving the image and then re-aligning the map to get the entire thing done. My main problem was that the focal range was about 4 inches off the page for the size I needed. I kept holding up the back of my hand or even an extra piece of paper for a clear image when the lines all merged together in a mess. I think it came out pretty well – I had to freehand in Alaska and I think I added in an extra country behind Albania but it looked not too bad.