So to continue with todays work:

I tried to make the main mountain arch less visible and I think it worked ok-ish.

Then I quickly made a river layer on which I drew the river already in color and just left it there for orientation.
Afterwards came the forest layer. Here I spent some more time for sketching the outline and trying to show where the hills and mountain chains end. I made 8 clearings in the forest where my points of interest will go.

Hermits_hut_forest.jpg

Then I made the buildings layer on which I drew the points of interest

Hermits_hut_buildings.jpg

So far I am pleased with how it went. I am happy with my sketches, of course there is room for major improvement but for beginning I'm ok with this.
Next up will be adding some details to the surrounding plains..not much thought since the focus is on the forest. And then coloring and shading.

One thing I noticed is that I should have probably made a bigger map since my points of interest were imagined with to much details for the amount of pixels I had to work with.

Again, any comment, suggestion, opinion is very much welcome and appreciated.

Cheers,
Barek