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Hi Frenchie, thanks for asking.
My setup is actually quite simple. Hardware-wise I'm using a (pretty old) Windows laptop and a (so old they no longer make them) Wacom Bamboo tablet. On the software side everything in this map is done with Photoshop CC.
About brushes: I'm not a big fan of those fancy schmancy brushes that tend to promise more than they deliver. Tried them in the past - didn't like them. So in this map I've been experimenting with simple round brushes only. For the coastline I went for a 3 px 0% hardness brush without shape dynamics. The little squigglies that lend some depth to the coastline DO have shape dynamics activated, however: a minimum diameter of 33% (or 1 px) with control set to pen pressure. This allows variable thickness without going too thin. I used a 4 px, 0% hardness brush for the mountains, again with stroke thickness set to pen pressure (25% in this case). Once the mountains were finished, I discovered the strokes are in fact a bit too thick to my taste, so I reverted back to using a 3px, 0% hardness 33% diameter brush for everything else (no way in hell was I gonna redo the mountains). I think I'll use the same brush for the mountains as well in my future maps, though I might still experiment a bit (or a lot) with the minimum diameter settings.
And that's all there is to it! At least regarding the linework. For the shading and colouring I'm still very much in a testing phase, I'm afraid. The results are acceptable at this point, but there's not much consistency yet when it comes to the brushes I used. One thing I learned from Max's mini tut on mountain shading is to set the brush opacity to pen pressure (and don't toggle the minimum diameter in that case!). It lends your strokes a waterpaint-ish quality that I rather like. I used it for every non-linework stroke you can see: shading, background, forest colour etc.
And that's all! Linework and fill, it's all a matter of experimenting until you get something you like, and then consistently keep doing it until your map is finished. Which mine still isn't by a long shot, so I guess I have some work to do.
I still think the forest texture (and now, also the microterrain, which is another interesting term by the way!) is too evenly spread out, and if you'd erase a few at random, it'll give a more natural appearance. I also wonder if the desert ridges would look better with slightly thinner lines, more like the micro stuff, they are very similar to the rivers right now!
