My completed map for the April/May 2018 Lite Challenge, “Create a Bookcover.” The challenge required using a given map shape to create a book cover and required all names to be famous musicians/bands. I'm honored to have won this challenge and I appreciate all of the feedback, votes, and lovely comments from my fellow Guild members.

I have a 1957 printing of the Lord of the Rings trilogy; each book has a fold-out map of Middle Earth attached to its inside back cover. I was dusting my bookshelf and for unknown reasons had “Silent Lucidity” by Queensr˙che stuck in my head…and inspiration for this challenge hit. I went for a Middle Earth feel to my map; I haven’t been successful with that before but think I finally came close.

I photographed the plain red cover of Fellowship (without its book jacket) and then fiddled with it in Photoshop. I drew everything else except the text and city icons by hand, using a Wacom Intuous tablet in Photoshop. The trees are mine, but I turned my tree into a brush so I didn't have to do each one individually. The mountains and hills I did draw individually. The font is Party Business, available at dafont.com. The folded paper texture is from OnlyGFX.com. Both font and paper are under a free "any use" license. The city icons are brushes by Schwarzkreuz, which he kindly made available here; I combined two or three of the brushes to make the icons.

WIP thread is here.

Lite Challenge Entry:
Lost Island of Queensryche v8 (sm).jpg

Map only:
Lost Island Map (sm).jpg