Baby's First Steps

[AaronAugustus]

This is all very good, but how should I make the rivers?

[Ascension]

Rivers don't split apart and stay split apart except in deltas because they run into the ocean before coming back together. I use this analogy all the time; think of a river as a tree where the roots are the delta, (very small delta/root system, these do not extend inland for hundreds of miles), then the main river is the trunk and the branches are up around the mountains and in the plains. Rivers come together...they might split for a short while to go around dense rock but they will come back together. Rivers carve out a channel thus they stay together and just continue to deepen the channel. Think of lakes like a dandelion, one main tap root goes out ie one river comes out of a lake, but many go in.

[AaronAugustus]

Okay. I'll work on the rivers.

I can't seem to find tutorials on map decorations. Any suggestions?

[Ascension]

The reason for that is 2 things: it's all hand-drawn work (and that just takes lots of practice to get good at drawing things) and the other is inspiration (each map has different intentions so the subject matter varies so widely). So if I were to make a tutorial on how to draw a certain kind of cartouche, then someone would come along and say that they need a different style and need a tut for that...you would end up with hundreds of tuts, one for each style. As to the subject matter, I could teach you draw a conquistador but then someone would want dwarves. And lastly, I can't draw a cartouche to save my life so I can't make a tut for it. So the best thing to do is to just look at other maps to get some ideas as to what you want and then do some rough drafts on paper with pencil. There are thousands of things that you can download, from around the web, that you can turn into decorations like swirls, swashes, banners, flags, shields, cartouches, etc. and with so much stuff available it is quite a deterrent to making a tut for such things. Although I do agree that someone who knows how to do such things would get high marks from me if they were to make a tut since I know very little about graphic design of decorations. The other thing that I found handy was to go to Barnes & Noble and go to the art section and pick up some books that have royalty free swirlies in them. I use them in my stained glass work often; there are art deco books, victorian books, edwardian books, art nouveau books, any style really.