Traditional media:
Pencils: I often sketch out my ideas with a simple mechanical pencil, though sometimes I'll do more than a sketch and use better paper. If I'm shading with pencil I use a set of Faber-Castell graphite pencils that range from F to 8B. That's just what I have but there are others. I saw a video tutorial about carbon pencils that looked to have potential; they're a lot darker than regular graphite and have less of the shine. I've also seen a video in which a mechanical eraser was used to good effect--intriguing, but expensive compared to regular erasers. Blending, I have used a stub but it makes the paper less workable... I've heard good things about using a soft paint brush but haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

I have a set of charcoal pencils but they don't blend as well as vine charcoal so they basically live in a drawer.

I gave up on regular colored pencils pretty quickly (I don't have a knack for it, or patience) but I do have a set of Derwent Inktense pencils which are watersoluble and I like those for sketching in color or adding color to pencil outline drawings (never on top of shaded pencil because it goes nasty muddy grey), and for some finished map styles they work well on their own. They're very intense though, as the name implies, and it's easy to overdo it. I usually apply the color with a water brush instead of directly on the paper.

For pens, I like the XS PITT Artist pen. I've heard good things about the Copic but the PITT pens are available to me locally. If you want to see an example of the PITT pen, check out my Iceland map; everything but the title is the XS PITT pen. The paper is 140lb Arches hot press watercolor. The title was done with Liquitex acrylic ink and a dip pen.

I recently purchased a number of acrylic inks (Liquitex and a few FW) and a variety of dip pen nibs (Speedball sketching and cartography sets) but, again, haven't had a chance to use them yet. I'm hoping to soon.

Watercolors are an excellent option, and I used some black wc to wash the ocean in the Iceland map, but I don't have much experience with them otherwise. If you decide to try them out, masking fluid is a good idea. Apply it liberally, remove as soon as possible, and don't get the clear stuff. It is easy to make a mistake when you can't see what you're doing.

Gouache is another painting medium I haven't used but I've seen some amazing maps created with it.

My personal favorite, from what I have used, is acrylic paint. I won't go into it here, but if you are interested in taking it up and want more details or suggestions from my own experience, ask.


Digital tools: Photoshop is solid for mapping, and anything else, and is my go-to for digital work.

I used GIMP when I began mapping; it's a decent program and it worked well enough when it was what I had, but I stopped using it before I really learned how to use it as well as I've seen others around here do.

I've also used Sketchbook and Artrage, though less for mapping. I think of Sketchbook as a dry media tool because it does pencil, pen, charcoal and chalk effects quite well. I think it also does markers nicely but I haven't gotten into that media much. Recently I also messed around with the Sketchbook app's paintbrush tool and got some promising results. Artrage I like specifically for its painting tools and a couple others--it's sort of to Corel Painter like GIMP is to Photoshop, but with a very different UI. It's not as good on the watercolors as what I've done in Photoshop, but I have seen others do that very well so I'm sure there are tricks to it.

For mobile drawing, I recently upgraded my old dumb phone for the new Note (which has a stylus) and downloaded the Sketchbook and Artrage apps, and I agree with THW that the stylus and touchscreen are more limited--or less exact--than a drawing tablet like the Wacom Intuos, but still quite capable. Whether it's good enough depends on what you're looking to do with it... and how patient you can be with the undo button.

I don't know if any of that was helpful to you, or stricrly what you were asking, but there it is. Maybe it'll give you some ideas.