This is some very early WIP of my Meridian Islands work. But first, some history as to how it came about...

In my childhood years (we're talking about 25 years ago) my brother and neighbours would play backyard cricket and name the various grounds / stadiums we would play at. During my teenage years, I began playing Civilization and Sim City, and began to imagine the cities and country the grounds would be in.

As luck would have it, I dug up an old sketch from way back and thought I'd start to give it more thought. What began as 'Pacifica' somewhere in the southern hemisphere in the Pacific Ocean has morphed into the Meridian Islands (so named due to their approximate location on the ancient line of meridian), around 30'S 20'W in the Atlantic Ocean. Currently there is one main island and two additional, but envisage more being created.

These two images show an initial sketch undertaken a few weeks ago and an updated GIMP version (which I've subsequently printed and continued to draw on by hand (emerging cities / regions; history; more rivers etc.) Both have a scale of 1:5,000,000. I have to give a big shout out to Gidde's 'Hand Drawn Mapping' tutorial. Managed to get most of it going (excl. labels and coastal shading) but still fairly basic. Did this hand-drawn version to get the use of GIMP, having not used it or PS before.

Next steps are a more detailed coastline, some work on the rivers and some mountain topography. In the meantime, feel free to comment.

01_Meridian_Hand drawn.jpg

02_Meridian_GIMP v1_HD style.png

03_Meridian_GIMP printed.jpg