Atlas of Melero

[Meton]

My first map post here! I'd like to share one series of maps as an example of the maps I've been doing. Thesa maps depict the continent of Melero with four different maps, hence the title "atlas". Melero is a continent, or maybe a group of islands, which are divided between eleven countries. Melero doesn't have a clear spatial or temporal context, but it could be a place in our present world.

The maps have been drawn 2012-2014, with different pens to A4-sized paper. A photocopier has helped to make many versions of the same place. The colouring has been made with coloured pencils, so the colours are very light. I tried to scan these maps but I could'n get the colours to not disappear, so I photographed them. Sorry for the bad quality.

None of these maps was ment to be a finished cartographic product as such, which is the reason to the lack of labels, legend and a proper layout. Nevertheless, these have been finished maps for many years, so I thought it's better to post them here to Finished Maps. It's possible that I will make some day an another map of Melero, perhaps one with labels on it. (I never did a labeled map to this place, maybe I wasn't interested in names back then. I even coined the name of the continent today). I've now found a lot of sources for inspiration from this forum, and it would be interesting to try to use computer for example colouring one of the maps or overlaying these maps together. I already added my name on those with computer, so why not labels. There might be more maps of Melero in the future.


The first map is a general map of the continent. It shows the mountain ranges, rivers, lakes, borders of the countries, cities, main roads and ferry connections between islands.

Melero_general_tag.jpg

The second map is a transportation network map, but not very succesful I think. Green lines are main roads, red lines are railroads, blue lines are ferry routes. Brown and yellow lines are roads and ferries that cross a national border, it looks a bit confusing. There are also sea lanes used by ships drawn on the sea.

Melero_transport_tag.jpg

The third map is an elevation map. It shows the generalised contours for the whole continent and nothing else. No borders, roads or cities. Five elevation zones used, two for lowlands and three for mountaineous areas.

Melero_elevation_tag.jpg

I like to go deep into the relief of landmasses and how it effects to the course of rivers. The fourth map is about drainage basins and river network. The catchment areas of major rivers are drawn with black line, rivers with blue. The map is made on top of the elevation map. No man-made features in this map either.

Melero_watersheds_tag.jpg

All comments are welcome! For example about colouring or realisticity of features or if you have any development ideas.

[Mouse]

Lovely maps, Meton, and welcome to the Guild

Though all four of them have interesting qualities, I like the last two maps best of all, because I'm more of a natural landscape person

You ask about development ideas? I have a couple, but they wouldn't really be practical if you were doing all this by hand.

Have you considered what software you might want to use if you start working on this digitally?

[Greg]

Welcome to the Guild, Meton!

I really like the overall shape of the landmass and the broken islands scattered across, but I particularly love the way you've done the different versions highlighting the separate elements. Really nice work, though I don't envy the time it must have taken!

I think an overlayed version would be awesome to see, though I wouldn't know the best way to go about it.

[Meton]

Lovely maps, Meton, and welcome to the Guild

Though all four of them have interesting qualities, I like the last two maps best of all, because I'm more of a natural landscape person

You ask about development ideas? I have a couple, but they wouldn't really be practical if you were doing all this by hand.

Have you considered what software you might want to use if you start working on this digitally?

Thank you Mouse!
I also like the last two the most from these four maps. I try to be as realistic as possible in the natural landscape, not forgetting of course the man-made landscape.

You're welcome to tell any ideas even if they would seem now impractical, I'm open to everything. If I start working digitally I think I will use open software, Gimp and Inkscape if needed. I like to draw by hand, and for now I began developing hand drawing skills with a new map from this continent, wip here. But again any ideas are welcome, I could use any other software also.

Welcome to the Guild, Meton!

I really like the overall shape of the landmass and the broken islands scattered across, but I particularly love the way you've done the different versions highlighting the separate elements. Really nice work, though I don't envy the time it must have taken!

I think an overlayed version would be awesome to see, though I wouldn't know the best way to go about it.

Thank you for your nice words!
It has taken a lot of time but that was time well spent. Strange how it feels so good to draw these things.
An overlay would be interesting, I also don't know how to do it. But I think that instead of combining just these it would be more fun to just draw some new maps.