The Art of Jeffrey Obser

Monday, December 8, 2025

PRYDAIN BY MAPA JEFF CARTOGRAPHY 2025

This is PRYDAIN, a Wales-sized (but it's not Wales) imaginary country, the setting for Lloyd Alexander's marvelous 1960s-era series of five young-teen medieval-hero novels.

THE BOOK OF THREE

THE BLACK CAULDRON

THE ISLE OF MONA

TARAN WANDERER

THE HIGH KING

The computer-labeled and -enhanced map below originated as a painting on a tabletop. I first reread the texts, logged all locations and descriptions, and made several sketches on tracing paper over the oval-shaped table surface. When I had the layout mostly making sense - no easy feat considering Alexander's quick little strokes, a few of which are contradictory! - I executed it in acrylic inks and pen dyes dripped into acrylic texture media to create spontaneous landforms, as they would look from an airplane. Region by region, with riverbeds carved in by Dremel. This is my "landscapes from space" technique, applied to bring to life to a fictional country 150 miles long.

FOUR COMMOTS ARE KNOWN FROM THE BOOKS. THERE IS ROOM FOR DOZENS.

MORVA, BETWEEN THE GREAT OCEAN, THE GREAT FOREST, AND THE RIVER TEVVYN.

ONE REASON CAER DALLBEN WAS SO SAFE WAS THAT IT HAD 20 MILES BETWEEN IT AND ANYBODY MUCH IN PARTICULAR.

75-MILE-WIDE AREA BETWEEN IDRIS AND VALLEY CANTREVS.

THE REALMS OF FFLEWDDUR FFLAM STRETCH OFF 30-50 MILES FROM CAER DATHYL AND THE EAGLE MOUNTAIN RANGES.

Friday, October 25, 2024

PRYDAIN

ALL THE ELEMENTS OF A GOOD STORY

This is PRYDAIN, a Wales-sized (but it's not Wales) imaginary country in which Lloyd Alexander's series of five young-teen novels all take place.

THE BOOK OF THREE

THE BLACK CAULDRON

THE ISLE OF MONA

TARAN WANDERER

THE HIGH KING

The refinements have only begun in Photoshop, but I'm pleased with the antique-looking font and layout of the informational elements.

This piece is my newest. I finished the table art for Middle Earth in 2010 - and this is only the second time I've done a map in this style.

Monday, May 15, 2023

Middle Earth Map

It only took 13 years! Click on the image for a larger view.

I painted this piece on a tabletop at the end of my first wave of "landscapes from space" - it was, and still is, the most elaborate and ambitious project based on the acrylic technique of dies soaking into materials to create landforms.

I tried twice to affix a transparent sticker to the glass tabletop, to show the names of the places in some form. But the effect wasn't good; the type wasn't legible enough; and after all a layer of plastic impedes the light getting to the surface.

Last summer I built a frame device to convey a high-resolution camera two inches at a time across the painting's surface. Then I stitched the images together; there were scores of little photographs to blend and eliminate seams.

But once I had the painting all scanned and tuned up, I spent a lot of time improving it by Photoshop. (One gets rid of all the hairs, little scratches, and bloops that pile up when a table sits around for many years). Setting the type was easy – I had already done it on an older, less satisfying photo of the piece.

SO HERE IT IS. Middle Earth from J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy novels, Jeff style. I researched this carefully; I have the Atlas of Middle Earth on my shelf still.

High-quality prints of this map are available via Mapa Jeff Cartography's online store.