Watercolor mapmaker here :)

[Redrobes]

Heh ! I have posted 3 times to Reddit and got banned twice. I gave up after the second time. Being an admin here I am sure you can imagine my surprise at being banned from a forum - just like you I had no reason for it. Reddit is a lost cause unless you cheat their system and karma farm an account first. Its well broken.

[Tiana]

So doing some threads on here showing WIPs gives confidence to people who need a map.

Ehh... some of my clients are really cagey about their vision being exposed so definitely choose to be mindful about that. Also just for myself, I'd go mad if I had to take constructive feedback from 20 different people, so if you do want guild feedback make sure you ask your client first! and it's okay if you don't. Really, I almost never share WIP work and I get plenty of clients. In the end the most important thing to getting a map commission client is having a nice piece of art in a place where someone wanting to buy a map looked.

I agree that this is an essential site to be on for a cartographer, and also the best community on the internet. I doubt anyone's ever been banned, and if it was, it wasn't a hair trigger decision like Reddit.

There's a Discord but it isn't as active as the forum so I recommend posting there if you want immediate feedback and here if you want the long term presence of your art in a searchable place where people come exclusively to see maps.

It's good to get involved in the contests if you want to meet people and stretch your limits before taking on real commissions. That will give you a prompt and it's similar in spirit as people will often give feedback you can follow up on, like a commissioner usually will.