Hello, friends!

I hope you are all doing well!

After several months of cartographic inactivity, I finally managed to sit down and do another map. Lately, I've been fascinated with the 17th century maps - in particular Atlas Maior of 1665, by Joan Blaeu - so I wanted to try my hand at this style and see whether I can achieve on paper what they did by engraving wood or copper back then. So, here's an A4 map of Australia, entirely hand made, ink and watercolor on paper.

Australia-by-Nopkin.jpg

All in all, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Of course there's plenty of room for improvement, and I plan to do some more maps in this style. I'm still struggling to find the best ink and paper combination. This one was done on 300 gsm Arches hot pressed, which is very good for watercolor, but I wasn't really happy with how it handled the ink (or maybe it was the ink, I don't know...).

Also, I've tried several brands of ink on the map, and although all of them were supposed to be water resistant when dry, I still got some bleeding here and there. Anyway, if anyone knows an ink and paper combination that also handles watercolor well, please share your findings.

As always, I'd love to know what you guys think. Any comments and critiques are highly appreciated.

Thanks!