Romic National Map

[Romic]

Basically I drew this (with graph paper) I used it to give a better scale. All of it is freehand and colored in by colored pencil. (I am very new to doing this.) I have the overview and close ups of each part.
Please give me any feed back Any feedback welcome!

Link to album with map:
My Map

[Azélor]

Your rivers are really wrong. They make crosses everywhere wich mean that your landmass is a bunch of seperate islands. I think it was not your intention so there is a couple of things you can do to improve.

1- lakes only have 1 source of water coming out. It's possible to have more but it's unlikly.
2- river flow downhill making the shortest route to the ocean
3 they only join up when they flow downhill
4- if you surround a patch of land with water it will generaly be considered an island so you should separate them somewhere in the middle
It's possible but rare that 2 important rivers take their water from a near source. But even so, it's just a tiny river at start and it's better to avoid mapping it because it's too small and confusing.

One question : what are the approximate latitudes of your map ?

Other than that, I'm not really a good drawer so I can't give advices.

[Romic]

Your rivers are really wrong. They make crosses everywhere wich mean that your landmass is a bunch of seperate islands. I think it was not your intention so there is a couple of things you can do to improve.

1- lakes only have 1 source of water coming out. It's possible to have more but it's unlikly.
2- river flow downhill making the shortest route to the ocean
3 they only join up when they flow downhill
4- if you surround a patch of land with water it will generaly be considered an island so you should separate them somewhere in the middle
It's possible but rare that 2 important rivers take their water from a near source. But even so, it's just a tiny river at start and it's better to avoid mapping it because it's too small and confusing.

One question : what are the approximate latitudes of your map ?

Other than that, I'm not really a good drawer so I can't give advices.

Not exactly sure about the latitudes exactly. I will be improving my skills where I can.

Thanks for the feedback

[Gumboot]

2- river flow downhill making the shortest route to the ocean

At the risk of being a river nazi, this is a claim that's made a lot around here and it's simply not true. Water has absolutely no idea how far away the ocean is, or which is the shortest route. What they take is the easiest route. Often that's also the shortest, but often it's not. A perfect example would be the Nile, which begins its journey less than 500km from the Indian Ocean, but travels almost 7,000km north to the Mediterranean Sea.

[Chashio]

That's a good start! Colored pencils are great (they get really fun when you start overlaying colors to make new colors, and then textures and patterns), and graph paper is just plain awesome ... You do have a slight case of fill-every-corner-of-the-page-with-land syndrome, but I've seen worse - you should pull through all right.

I'm not going to touch the rivers except to say... If you find an interest in correct river placement, there is a tutorial floating around here somewhere, about 'getting your rivers in the right place' and there are probably a few others.

Only other thing that really jumps out is your legend contents... They seem a bit sloppy for having been drawn on graph paper, although, I have to admit, it does give it an endearing quality. I look forward to seeing more of your work.

[Romic]

I do thank you

I will be working more with the Graph Paper. Organizational skills will be improved.
The filling of land was mostly because it's how I imagined my own country would look.

I will look for the River tutorial

Thanks for the feed back

[Azélor]

Nazi...

yes, it's still the shortest route considering the topography of the surrounding. I mean it's the shortest route if there is no obstacle.

[Gumboot]

Nazi...

yes, it's still the shortest route considering the topography of the surrounding. I mean it's the shortest route if there is no obstacle.

Fair enough, I just see it being used a lot to critique maps where a river begins nearer coast X but drains to coast Y.