Hello! First-timer here! (hand-drawn WIP)
Hello! *waves* My name is Windsor, I hail from Reddit, a humble beginner in the mapmaking world (I began this week with Jared Blando's book, its phenomenal). After hearing about your forum, I had to come check it out! I love and feel so inspired by all that I've seen so far. There's a lot of love here and I'm very excited to join the ranks. Thanks for having me!
On to the map! As my first prototype/demo map, I started with this! Just HB pencil on 7x10" watercolor paper, title unknown - though I think Solmyr or Halmyr perhaps, considering the large island on the bottom right is called Anmyr, and I want to connect the names linguistically.
My next step will be landmarks & cities. Any feedback and criticism is more than welcome, thanks again!
Pencil Map First Draft.jpg
Great start! It's a shame the photo is a little blurry. Or is it the pencil? As a strictly-digital kind of guy I can't really tell.If I were you I'd scan it and add landmarks and cities digitally, but I'm sure there's lots of analogue masters here who can give you a ton of useful tips. Looking forward to see how it turns out!
-Niels
Thank you so much Niels! It might be a little of both - its on small watercolor paper so I've had to be careful with my lines, and the photo isn't perfect unfortunately! I think I'm going to try out hand drawing everything and seeing how it goes, I'll keep this up to date with my progress (I have two straight nights of D&D so it might be a hot minute)!
Last edited by windsor811; 10-15-2018 at 07:18 PM.
Nice start. I am eager to see your progress on this map.
No... come on. Beginner in cartography? and you get a map like this. *applauds and gives high five*. My VERY VERY first map took me ages and had a lot of work left to fix it.
So, very nice start.
As someone who LOVES drawing maps by hand and then when I'm happy taking it from there to enhance it digitally, there are a few things that might smooth out the process.
One, when you take a photo of the map, it doesn't hurt to put it into GIMP(free) or Photoshop and lower the brightness and up the contrast. It helps make the lines pop when showing your progress. It is super quick and you can still happily draw the map by pencil or pen in the meanwhile. It is just easier to see detail on here.
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I'm with XCali, you're a beginner? I'm a beginner and even via computer, I can't get it looking that good.
Lovely work!
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"
Thank you all so much! I really appreciate the kind words.
An update! Huzzah! Complete with locations, a compass, borders, etc. Even a lighthouse hiding somewhere!Any feedback is greatly welcomed. Thanks!
Arith Map (first draft) .jpg
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