Hello all! I was delighted to find that there was a forum dedicated to cartographers! Doubly so when the few posts I have read so far indicate that there are many professional artists that do commissions. I am a amateur writer working on my first book, no publishers deal or even thoughts of publishing any of my work at this point. During the creation of my fantasy story I hit a massive roadblock, not in writing but in..... You guessed it: cartography. Terrible artist not withstanding, I am a great fan of fantasy maps like Robert Jordan's maps, or from this site Ramah's Vaniya Redone. So I have come to the experts with a few questions.

I find that the geography of a region or a continent plays a major role in cultural development, history of warfare, natural resources, population (and more) thus without a completed and viable world-map back story and thorough world-building have become a problem. Especially considering that if I continue to change the world map these histories of nations will have to be constantly written and that is a MAJOR pain. I would have done the world map first, sadly I was not that fore sighted and already have certain points fairly fixed in their relation to each other.


So after all this writing what do I want to ask? I need a basic, to scale, black and white, neat, map of 2 continents. I have mostly the shape of each continent and some specific land features and city locations. Other than that I have nothing really set in stone because I don't have the geography nailed down.

So any tips on creating hand done, scale, maps? biggest killers for me are rivers, any terrain that isnt mountains, and scale.