Globe Drawing for Earth Day
• James Hedberg
I don’t know about you, but around here we love drawing maps, and we love looking at globes. But, it’s been a little hard to do both at the same time. Globe making is not a particularly easy hobby, and especially when little hands are involved, the painstaking work of printing out a dozen little segments (gores) and gluing them to a perfect sphere can be challenging. So, here’s a compromise. You draw a map, we’ll put it on a virtual sphere that you can play with. Like this one (click and drag to see the whole globe):
Instructions:
Here’s a quick list of steps to make your own virtual globe based on a drawing:
1 - All you’ll need is a world map template in the equirectangular projection - you can use this pdf file:
2 - Then print out the pdf, get some crayons or pencils or whatever you want and have fun coloring your map. (when you print it out, make sure to select the option that scales the image to fit your paper - every printer is a little different and this will make sure you get the whole map printed)
3 - After you’re done, you’ll need to scan it in, or take a picture of it and submit it via this form:
4 - Then, we’ll process the image and add it to the growing gallery of hand drawn globes:
Check it out here:
[and of course you could just go off the rails and draw Mars or make up your own planet or something, but we’ll stick with Earth for now].
About the author
Dr. Hedberg has made some globes by hand and can assure you it’s difficult. Though, if he had to it all over again, being a globe maker would have been a good choice.
