Good evening!
This is my first mapmaking post in this forum, and I hope to not ashame myself too much with my poor art.
I browsed various tutorials suggested in the forum, tried them and in the end I found that I prefered the style from Saderan's tutorial, so I spent some hours on it, starting on a land outline I already decided for my campaign. The almost-finished result is the following (the original is 3500x2500):
geintamesh-ridotta.jpg

There are still some missing elements: I still need to make the lava and the lake water more realistic, also I haven't touched the minor islands yet.
I stumbled on size issues, because I needed a map that was big enough for players to need at least 2 weeks to move from one side to the other, so I chose a 1:1mln scale, where 1 cm on the map is 10km! thus the volcanos (both the active and the lake one) are a bit oversized... i made real poor initial designing, but i don't want to trash all my work right now...
Right now, i need some suggestions on:
-How to make coastal cliffs that will fit with this style, and also how to transition from cliff to beach (some of those inlets will be beaches!
-The volcanic lake on the right (the one with the island in the middle) will need to be some sort of gondolin-style settlement: there will need to be a grassy valley near that lake, that will host a big village/small town.
-how to make a good swamp that fits this style: the huge crater on the right of the map (the one filled by the sea, whose perimeter is defined by the circular inlet and the surrounding islands) will need to be an huge swamp... actually, beach (near the coast) fading to swamp (center) fading back to regular sea (surrounding islands)
also, any other input will be welcome! remember i'm a total newbie, this is actually my first shot at mapping, since I was tired of my horrific handmade sketches!

Thanks a lot

-Francesco