Partway through the plotting. The lines radiate from the viewpoint (Brantwood) through each contour line wherever it crosses a ridge. Every fifth contour is highlighted in green to help keep track of the altitudes. I made a template to show how far above the horizon each contour's altitude would appear - this reduces with distance from Brantwood of course.
Once this was sorted out, the actual plotting went quite quickly. It was very satisfying to see the shapes of familiar fells appearing.
This is a plot from the map to recreate the view from Brantwood in perspective. It was an interesting challenge. First step was to cut a quadrant from the contour map giving the area in the view, ranging from west (left) to north (right). I rigged up a ruler to pivot so that I could draw lines radiating from Brantwood. I marked up the contours where I judged they would be on the skyline or a nearer ridge-line. Each contour would become a point in the view, and the ridges and skyline could be estimated by joining the dots.
This picture was taken when I was ready to begin the plotting.
This is a hand-coloured section of the Coniston Fells contour data. The colours I chose are reminiscent of those I remember on the old Bartholomew "half-inch" maps, which I think are objects of beauty in their own right.
In early 2019 I commissioned a bespoke set of contour data from Harvey Maps, for use in developing artworks for my exhibition at Brantwood in November 2019, "Above and Below". One of the ideas I had in mind was to use a 3D printer to make a relief map that I could then make a painting of as a still-life object.
It turned out that the complexity of the contour detail was beyond the capabilities of the printer. However, the contours in themselves had a sculptural quality that I felt somehow captured the nature of the land, conveying truth about it in quite a different way from a conventional landscape view. I found myself comparing it to other natural surfaces at different scales, from fingerprints to tide-washed sand to limestone pavements to satellite images.