A new (hopelessly overwhelmed) challenger approaches

[Lucifer]

Aloha, folks,

I'm new to this forum and also essentially new to cartography. I started drawing maps during geography courses and freetime when I was ~10-12 years old but stopped soon after. Nowadays, I mostly do handdrawn fantasy maps with pencil & paper for my D&D group that I'm DM'ing, and also for a fellow friend and DM occasionally.

However, I recently (really meaning yesterday) stumbled over Warlin's Atlantide map here on the forum, and it blew me away. Now, inspired by that map I decided to try my hand at doing something similar with GIMP and - as one would expect - failed. But, with the help of Candacis' tutorial on "Antique Maps in GIMP" I was able to produce what looked like a decent map. It's not entirely finished, and as it was a test I won't be using it in the future, but it gave me some hope that with a little bit of work (really a large bit, probably) and patience I'll eventually be good enough to approach monstrous tasks like an Atlantide-style map.

To start my cartography adventures, I want to learn about how to do things like aging, borders, latitude & longitude lines etc. I prefer drawing landmasses, mountains and rivers per hand, using GIMP and the drawing tablet that I borrowed from a friend.

As an immediate starting point, I'm currently trying to figure out how to get a nice parchment background, a border and some latitude & longitude lines in GIMP before I start drawing my landmass etc.

Finally, I just want to say that it's great that a community like this exists. I've always had a thing for beautiful maps ever since I started reading fantasy novels at a young age. Especially old maps pique my personal interest, and it's great to have a hub where I can learn about cartography from people much more knowledgable and experienced than me.

Thanks for reading and hello there :),
Lucifer

PS: For those who don't know what I mean when I say Warlin's Atlantide map: https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=36310

[ChickPea]

Hi Lucifer, and welcome to the Guild. I think you'll fit in nicely here!

You probably want to head for the Tutorials section and have a browse there for some guides on doing what you want. You may find some useful information in the Reference Material area too. If you can't find what you're looking for, you're welcome to start a thread explaining exactly what you're trying to achieve, and I'm sure someone will be able to help you. We've got a 'How Do I' area just for those kind of questions.

Look forward to seeing some of your work!

[Lucifer]

You probably want to head for the Tutorials section and have a browse there for some guides on doing what you want. You may find some useful information in the Reference Material area too. If you can't find what you're looking for, you're welcome to start a thread explaining exactly what you're trying to achieve, and I'm sure someone will be able to help you. We've got a 'How Do I' area just for those kind of questions.

Thanks for the help! I've already found a great tutorial for the borders from Arsheesh that will allow me to create exactly the type of border I'm looking for.

[ChickPea]

Excellent! Glad to hear you're finding what you need.