What about sketching maps?

[Aren]

I was wondering how detailed can you go? My friend asked me this question and I myself draw worldmaps, never have i tried city or dungeon maps and I was wondering How I could Get it to be more detailed and how I might draw city and dungeon maps.

[J.Edward]

Hey Aren. Best advice I could give is to draw bigger, as in 'on bigger paper'. That way you can go in and add more detail.
Also, sharp pencils for details, duller pencils for sketch lines. I start out rough sketches with slightly dull H-lead pencils because the lines will be light and not show when I get it to a more finished state. Then sharper darker lead pencils for details.
Technical pencils are good for finishing up details.
Always use a piece of scrap paper between your hand and the drawing to avoid smudging the lead.
There are some limits to level of detail. The pencil point only gets so small. That would be the main limit. That and the size of the paper. Well, and your vision. It can get hard to see some things as they get smaller/more detailed.

And the very best advice regarding drawing.... draw often. As often as you can. Sketch and resketch. Don't commit to big finished pieces at first. You may spend a lot of time trying to make a piece look good that may have fundamental flaws in it. That just wastes your time. Sketch a lot until you are confident about what you're drawing. Once you're there, it will be worth your time to start doing really detailed finishing work. I speak from experience there.

Well, hope that is helpful. I'm more than happy to answer anything further.
Maybe some others will put in their opinions and advice too.
Cheers,
John

[Gamerprinter]

What I do is create outline shapes in my vector drawing application that I intend to hand-draw, I generally print them large format at 24 x 24 inches or larger to serve as my "sketch". Then I place a piece of tracing paper on top, tape it down, and using a micropoint pen hand-draw all the line work hinted at the sketch, while doing some detail work using my imagination. After I'm done drawing, I digitally scan the hand-drawing (I have a large format scanner/inkjet printer in my shop). Then I import the drawing back into my vector drawing program and finish the work for color, shadows, etc. I never sketch by hand anymore. Often especially in hand-work its difficult to get lines for walls perfectly straight or round towers perfectly round - so I accomplish that by designing digitally first in outline format, and print that out as my sketch, that I will trace from - that's how I do it professionally...

[Chashio]

How detailed do you want to go? It's more a style preference than any limitation... if you have the patience to work at it. Check out miniature pencil drawings. Or if that's more than you want to do, using a larger piece of paper like J.Edward said, and increasing the scale of the map (the size of the features get larger/closer) will get you more detail. You can also shrink images down after the fact for printing, if the original isn't the end-goal. Feel free to ask me any questions as well, if you have them. I do some small artworks... so, might be able to offer more help if you really want it?

[Gamerprinter]

Also what I didn't mention in my original post, I don't do a pencil sketch stage in the development of my hand-drawn maps. Rather I start-off with a micropoint pen and begin my final drawing from the start. I'm not the kind of artist that likes do things in pencil first then ink them in. I start and finish with a pen (at the drawing stage), then finish it (colorize, bevels, shadows) in a vector application. I generally create hand-drawn maps no smaller than 18 x 24, though more often at 24 x 36 inches. When I use the map I either keep it digital or export and print it to whatever size I need - full scale or tabloid size.