Homann: A Free 18th Century Cartography Brush Set for Fantasy Maps

[KMAlexander]

Hey everyone! It's been a while. (I've been heads down working on editing my latest book.) I hope everyone is well.

Today I’m releasing Homann, my latest completely free brush set.

This set comes from L'Isle de Cadix du Detroit de Gibraltar, a 1788 map of the Strait of Gibraltar, by Johann Baptist Homann, a prolific German geographer, cartographer, and wig haver. The OG map it comes from is pretty unique as it mixes many different styles. So the set is also a bit eclectic. It's partly a battlefield set with fortresses, defensive positions, towns, camps, and unit locations. It's partly cartographic with mountains, flora, and even agriculture represented. It's partly nautical with anchorages and sounding markers. It should work well alongside my other sets.

These are always distributed under a CC0 license, which means they’re free to use for personal or commercial work. No attribution is required! Let me know what you think!



You can read more about Homann and download the set over on my blog.



Detailed example:


featuredhomann.jpg

Some of the symbols:


homannsampler001.jpg

homannsampler002.jpg

Homann in use:
homanndecorated.jpg

[KMAlexander]

I'm really happy with how my color version turned out:

Sample_Color_Small.png

[Kier]

That looks great. I love the roads weaving in and behind the mountains. The set looks great.

[Bretton]

I find your contributions so useful I'll never be grateful enough. Thanks a lot, seriously!
PS: I also find your example map to be really nice. Congrats too!

[Hemdrall Itham]

These are amazing brushes. Thank you. If I end up using them I'll do my best to show you my work if you'd like.

[Greason Wolfe]

Another great set. My favorite so far.

[KMAlexander]

That looks great. I love the roads weaving in and behind the mountains. The set looks great.

Thanks! Yeah, I took a bit of liberty with the road. It looks cool, but it's not exactly period-authentic. It does give the map a bit of depth, though, so I was willing to go with style over accuracy with this one.

I find your contributions so useful I'll never be grateful enough. Thanks a lot, seriously!
PS: I also find your example map to be really nice. Congrats too!

You're very welcome. I'm happy to help. I'm also really happy with the sample map as well—the colors, in particular, work really well.

These are amazing brushes. Thank you. If I end up using them I'll do my best to show you my work if you'd like.

I'd love that! Always fun to see how people are using these things.

Another great set. My favorite so far.

Thanks, Greason! It's an interesting one. The weird mix of styles makes it stand out. It is always fun to find a resource like the original map and figure out how best to build a set from it.