EmoriaCustom art prints and star maps
Maps · Collection 01

Bali poster, drawn from the real map

8.3405°S / 115.0920°E · Indonesia

This is not a city, it is an island, streaked from north to south with lines running from the summits down to the coast. That is the movement of water, and it organises the entire sheet.

You choose the framing, the palette and the words of the caption. The work is drawn from real data, then printed to order in the workshop closest to you.

Compose my Bali poster
What the map shows

An island streaked north to south, and two lakes in the high ground

The wooded flanks of the volcanoes make the only continuous green mass on the sheet, with two bodies of water set into them, one of which fills a round hollow. The summits come out white: above the tree line our background has nothing left to draw. Then everything descends, roads and valleys leaving the ridge together and running south in almost parallel lines. Only one place genuinely fills in, the southern conurbation, dense and dark between two spurs of land.

Read on

The terraced rice fields are not in the data: the interior comes out white, and no palette will change it. The water temples do not draw either, being buildings. What remains are the lines of the slope, and they are not a poor substitute: they are the path water takes from the craters to the sea, and that twelve hundred collectives have shared out since the eleventh century.

Compose your own

What suits Bali

The palette

Two decisions, and they pull against each other. The sea surrounds everything: a deep ink gives a pale island set on darkness, a pale one gives a softer print in which the shape reads less. Then the green, which here only serves the high ground: there is no lowland green on Bali on this map, so give the flanks of the volcanoes a value marked enough to hold the top of the sheet on their own. The interior will stay pale whatever happens, and that is right: it is on that pale ground that the lines of the slope become visible.

The framing

Portrait, the island whole or nearly, and the high chain in the upper third. A vertical format is not what a wide island asks for: so you pull back until it fits, and the west, beyond the last slopes, is the first to go, as the research file expects. Keep the south entire, though, its two spurs and the neighbouring island: it is the bottom of the sheet that gives the scale of everything else.

The caption

The title, one line under it, the coordinates. The name of a slope, the name of a village, the year of a stay: on an island read from north to south, the caption line says what height you were at.

The sheet
Subject
Bali, Indonesia
Palette
Paras
Map style
Clean and Detailed
Layout
Frame
Typeface
Deco
Framing
Zoom 8.6
Fade at the edges
10%
Format
Portrait
The palette of this poster

Paras

Sixteen inks, in the configurator’s order. It is not in the catalogue, but you will find it in the palette library, filed under its material.

  • Background
  • Water
  • Greenery
  • Built-up areas
  • Roads
  • Buildings
  • Text
  • Motorways
  • Main roads
  • Secondary roads
  • Minor roads
  • Streets
  • Service roads
  • Paths
  • Railways
  • Borders
Compose with this paletteStart from it to make your own

Opens the colour workshop with these 16 inks in place: change one, keep the rest.

It will wait in your account, ready for any piece.

What the drawing tells

Three dates that explain the island

10th centuryTerraces named in an inscription

The terraces of Catur Angga Batukaru are mentioned in a tenth century inscription, which makes them the oldest attested on the island. They lie on the slopes you can see running down, west of centre. Nothing on the map sets them apart from the rest: they have been there for more than a thousand years and the background does not know them.

11th centuryTwelve hundred collectives to share the water

Since the eleventh century, networks of water temples, the subak, have managed the ecology of the terraced rice fields at the scale of whole watersheds. The island has around twelve hundred water collectives. This is not a decoration of the landscape, it is its operating system, and it follows exactly the lines of descent the print shows.

1963The highest point erupted

Agung, the island's highest point, erupted in 1963 and 1964: one of the largest eruptions of the twentieth century, with more than eleven hundred dead. Activity resumed in 2017 and 2019, then in 2022. The volcano sits at the eastern end of the chain you see across the top of the sheet, and its summit is one of the whites: what made this island is visible here only through its flanks.

Before ordering

The four questions people ask

Can I choose any place, any date?

Yes. The search covers the whole world, from a capital to a hamlet. For the Sky collection, any date works, past or future: the sky is calculated.

What sizes do you offer?

From 21 × 29.7 cm to 84.1 × 118.9 cm, that is A4 to A0, portrait or landscape depending on the material. Every size is shown with its price in the editor.

What materials do you offer?

Four, from the barest to the most dressed.

  • Matte fine art paperA 200 gsm art paper with a deep matte finish: the bare print, to frame as you please.
  • Wooden hangersThe print suspended between two wooden hangers, ready to hang, in the spirit of studio posters.
  • The classic frameThe print mounted under acrylic glass in a slim frame, assembled by hand, delivered ready to hang.
  • Framed canvasThe piece printed on canvas, stretched over a wooden stretcher bar and set in a frame: a gallery presence.
How long does it take?

Allow 1 to 4 working days for making, up to 7 for hand-assembled frames and canvases, then 1 to 6 working days in transit with standard delivery.

Digital editions are available immediately: the file of your piece is emailed to you as soon as you order.

All the questions

Your Bali

The road that only ever goes down, the lake where the air changes, the last town before the sea. The island is the same for everyone. The slope you came down is not.

Compose my Bali poster