Small village near a river in a hilly landscape

[Francissimo]

Looking at this map makes me want to live there. c'est tres bon. je l'aime!

Thx! the mayor of this town would be happy to hear that
For the app qgis i used, it is a free GIS software. It allows you to visualise vector or raster geotag data about real world. For exemple on this map i used a database about land use with existing roads, buildings rivers and topographic contour lines.. GIS softwares aren't very good for aesthetic purpose but it gives a quick and good basis for a map based on existing data. For exemple on that map i start with something like this on qgis,
ExQGIS.jpg
then export it in pdf to obtain the various layers of the map in vector format. There is quite some work to do after you obtain that pdf with raw data about your map, the shape of some layers like forest need to be reworked (in photoshop for me) for an aesthetic purpose. The huge advantage of that method is that you mainly focus on texturing, color choices and layer styles instead of redrawing all the elements of the map.