Torn Island - a first low res draft

[wildcode]

Hello fellow Cartographers!

The first step of my lengthy journey to be an Artisan Cartographer was to make something (at all); so I grabbed one of my homebrewn map sketches and decided to map out a small part of it.

To make things harder I got the followed image into my computer by collecting all not attached lamps in the house blazing on the paper, trying to get my crappy smart phone camera to catch some photons. The sketch size for this part of the map is about 2 inches (5 cm) across.

TornIslandSketch.jpg

To make things easier I followed the kind advice of Arsheesh to check out some tutorials and I decided to follow the eminent Eriond A Tutorial for GIMP & Wilbur. By gods! The challenge! But I pulled through and about six hours later. Here is the result.

The heightmap (from Wilbur):
WHP.png

The result (after lots of work):
TornIsland.jpg

There are some issues with most parts of the map; the rivers are to big and bloated (looks like fjords), the gradients (which I painstakingly did by myself inspired by the awesome guide) is not really on spot and yeah - the resolution. Which in a way I decided to keep low to get through the guide and learn stuff instead of getting stuck at things.

But I am very much satisfied with what I learned, so I recommend to follow that guide if you like me are a totally novice in mapmaking and quickly want to get a grasp of what different techniques you need to master to become an Artisan Cartographer!

Next step is to put some map borders on it; and I will use this (ofcourse ) Making Map Borders in GIMP

Catch ya later!

Best Regards
-wildcode

Update: This is the next version with smaller rivers and with reworked heightmap/gradients; also the ocean is blue instead of blackish:
TornIsland_v2.jpg