The Forgotten Lands
Forgotten Lands.jpg
This map is at the same time the first proper map I post here to the Finished Maps forum and something very different I have ever done. I had the idea of trying to do a classic fantasy style, black-and-white map, and the idea developed when I found a map I had drawn about ten years ago, when I was 14 or 15 years old. The map is the only map I have done in a fantasy style and not in a realistic contemporary map style. I remember how I filled it with all kinds of fantasy cliches and ad intriguing place names. I find the contents of the map still quite amusing and interesting, but technically the map is really poor.
So I came up with the idea that I'll redo the map, using skills I have learned and better tools I now have. Because the contents of the map were fine, I decided that I won't change anything in it. So I kept all the strange (although quite decent) coastlines, the place names and even the one questionable river that runs through a mountain range (well, it isn't entirely unthinkable). I didn't add names for places that didn't have any. I didn't draw forests or any other vegetation as there weren't forests in the old map. However, I decided to translate the Finnish names into English, which was also quite fun to do. In other words I pretended that the 15 year old me is a customer who just wants his map redrawn and translated. Only thing I added was the title; there was no title in the original map, so I invented this new title based on the story of the map.
This map is not a worldbuilding map, I have no idea what kind of realms or cities the named places are and which area exactly does the names refer to, what language the place names are or what is the history of the places. I didn't thought about those things back then and I didn't figure out them now. But I still like looking at the map and thinking about what adventures there could happen!
The map is hand drawn to a A4 sheet (Canson illustration paper) with Pigma Micron pens (003, 005, 01, 02 and 05). This map was fun to draw, it was altogether quite fast, and I learned a lot while doing it. I'm happy with most of the lettering, name translations, name placement, the mountains, compass rose, and the overall layout of the map. However, some of the labels were not succesful and there is even one typing error. As the map was mainly a test of the techniques, there are a lot of things I would do now differently. Maybe there are more maps to come in this style!
The WIP thread is here. Thank you for everyone who commented and helped me in the making!
Here's a picture of the map I drew about ten years ago (A5 gridpaper):
Original map.jpg
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Originally Posted by Kellerica
Thank you for the support and thanks for the rep also! I guess the clean look is due to that I didn't know how to do anything else with the map. It's nice to hear it works this way!