Heaven on Earth - Michelangelo's Jonah
Bradly Couch
Artwork part of ‘Time’ (Issue 15)
The Artist
Bradly Couch is a starving space artist and storyteller residing in the Greater Atlanta area of the United States. His love of viewing formal gardens surrounding castles, palaces and chateaux in satellite imagery led him to discover ancient myths hidden in the topography of planet Earth. For the past six years he has been working on his interactive map project Heaven on Earth - heavenearthmap.com
The Science and The Theme
Remote sensing technology, satellite imagery and digital maps provided by Google My Maps give us what can be construed as "angelic" vision, an artificial sixth sense with a heavenly view that we can employ to better perceive the world around us. The artwork is derived from Google My Maps imagery that was digitally modified.
Using the polygon tool in Google My Maps essentially allows me to create connect-the-dot art that can be shaded one color. It also has a transparency slider making the polygon 0-100% opaque. The texture comes from the topography underneath. If you look closely at Michelangelo's feet and legs, you'll notice the topography looks like toes, ankles, calves and kneecaps, thereby adding depth to the shading. To make subjects under the art easier to find, I follow natural features as much as possible. I use them as a guide as to where I place and how I shade the overlaid images.
Michelangelo's Jonah plays an important part of a bigger narrative told by the Heaven on Earth map. This short video was created early in the mapping project and explains in better detail.
Copyright statement. This work is published under the CC BY-NC-SA license