Friday, January 6, 2012

Mapping- New England Rockwall trick

for mappers out there here's a simple trick I learned as a surveyor's assistant over 25 years ago. This method allows one to quickly draw (and or ink) rock walls.


One draws a bumpy or wavy line along the run of a wall and then repeats an alternating bump along the same run to produce an illustration of a rock wall that doesn't require one to draw a bunch of little ellipses.

Here's an example:

Draw the first line



Draw the second line


All done, you've got a rock wall.

One can easily create packed rubble walls with more jagged lines and blocks/bricks of masonry with squared off lines. Some of my walls in my last post were done with such a method.

I mostly use it to pretty up maps I have to look at frequently but different patterns can be used to convey meaningful information.

5 comments:

  1. Very nice! Thanks for passing the easy mapping tip along.

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  2. Damn it man, I've doing archaeology for years and was never shown that trick. That's great for quickly capturing a lot of redundant information in a clear way. I must add this to the bag of tricks to impress undergrads. Thanks!

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  3. Hope you all can get some use out of the trick.

    @spawn, and you didn't have to stand in a pond or rose bush holding a reflector nor run across a field carrying equipment worth more then your annual salary while being chased by cows.

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