Magran

[Meton]

Presenting you the land of Magran. (Map in attachments, in the end of the post.)

In short:
- Depicts a fictional country of Magran with parts of its neighbouring countries.
- Completely hand drawn, coloured and lettered with pen on paper
- Drawn mostly with Micron pens for lines and texts and Copic markers and Promarkers for colours.
- 30 cm x 32 cm (11.7’’ x 12.6’’) in size

The map was finished already in March, but there has been all kinds of things going on, so I didn’t manage to post the finished map earlier. However, it’s not so long time considering I started the map in October 2017 and it took 17 months to draw the map from the beginning to the end. The drawing was a very long process and you can read more from it from the WIP thread here.

A great amount of time with this map went to deciding how to do it, as it was the first time I tried to do such a detailed work. I’ve bought many new pens and tools during the process and drawn dozens of test maps considering labeling styles, city icons, and especially the colours. I took months to find the right pens and colours. The style of the map is based on multiple 1950’s atlases. Most important inspiration was an atlas by John Bartholomew & Son Ltd, which was published in Finland 1959 under the name Kolumbus Maailmankartasto.

The contents of the map are based on some earlier, quite rough maps, which I have introduced shortly here. The coastlines and general topography as the locations of major cities and borders are based on the earlier maps, but the details and everything else is designed and planned for this map.

Most of the effort for the map went to the place names. Every name in the map is written in local language, and I created all the six different languages for this map. I have no translation or explanation for all of the names but quite many of them, so that the names would sound plausible. I kept track of all the labels I wrote, and the total number of labels in the map is 951. From these, 741 are for cities, towns and villages. The labeling was quite time consuming and it took ten months of the project (yes, I know, it’s a bit crazy). I did consider digital colouring and labeling at some point but I think in the end it was worth it doing everything by hand.

I tried to be as realistic as possible when creating the map, considering geology, geomorphology, settlement history, roads, borders and well, everything. The map is made so that the place could be from our earth, and looking at the graticule it can be placed on the globe, in fact. I have not written long backstories but I have in my mind some sort of explanation for most of the places, why they are there and what is happening in different places. The history of the nations is connected to the languages, place names, road networks and so on.

I made the map just for myself, for practice, to have a good looking map. Just before it was finished, I applied to a local art exhibition for young artists in Häme area in Finland, and happily Magran was chosen to be one of the artworks exhibited. So, the map was in the exhibition whole April. Here is a contactless scan made after the exhibition, with a bit reduced size.

Thank you for those of you who commented and helped me during the project! It was really nice to share the progress here, and it helped to carry the project to the end. Also thanks for all of you who commented through Instagram, where I also have shared the process. If you have any comments or thoughts, I would be happy to hear them! (If interested, I’m in the process of opening an Inprnt shop where this map would be available too.)