I was going to do the wip while working but it just progressed rather quicker than I planned.
So I'm putting it up here after the fact. Here's the finished map of Qaliste.

As said previously, this whole thing came about because I bought some new fonts and wanted to try them out.
So I took an old map and dropped some fonts on it. I quickly wrote up some 'inspirational' text and tried out several fonts.
I love type and lettering so I was having a good time. [ yep, total nerd. ]
Here's where it started
Qaliste b001.jpg
Well, technically, it started back in 2012 with this sketch.
Qaliste a001.jpg and then this redo Qaliste a002.jpg

Now, I've been slowly plugging away at an atlas style that wasn't often very popular.
But I knew I could make it better if I worked at it. Here's some progression on that concept.
Marlwood Region 02 lo2.jpg Carmegenny Region 01_alt8b.jpg Peng Li 01a.jpg

It was getting better. Then The ME maps gave me a push. Then working on Haerlech got me a little further.
EqR-M.L1.jpg Gondor [M5] by sirinkman.jpg NL - Haerlech region 01a_edit2.jpg

But back to that motivational text...
After looking at the text, I thought 'your map doesn't look good enough for that text and what it says'.
So I had to do something to it. I got to working on it for a bit...
Qaliste b002.jpg Qaliste b003.jpg Qaliste b004.jpg

I was happy with it but realized that I couldn't leave it there. It needed more.
Qaliste b005.jpg Qaliste b006.jpg Qaliste b007.jpg

It went a few steps further to it's current form. And a nice antique version.
Lands of Qaliste [stage1] by sirinkman.jpg Olde Qaliste 01 by sirinkman.jpg

I still want to do some more work to it. I wanted to do a really cool border and maybe some other bits.
But then I got myself drawn in to making the whole world that Qaliste sits in.
Obviously that's going to take some time to do.

At the moment I am considering trying to make a campaign product out of this with additional maps and such.
I have some stuff I need to learn about putting together and releasing product on DTRPG though.