er, yeah, new here...

[Lexxin]

Yeah, I've been holding back on introducing myself for a while.
I'm fairly interested in Cartography, and have drawn many hand-drawn maps over the past few years. Originally for DnD games, but my interest in that failed me in the past year. But, I still draw maps often.
Anyways, guess that's the meat of my introduction, but as a little side dish I am also trying to make heads or tails of Inkscape (a daunting task for someone who hasn't ever touched a graphic making program other then MS Paint). I'm thinking that after I get proficient in Inkscape I might move on and try GIMP. Inckscape just seems like the simpler of the two.
Yeah, That was my intro.
Oh yeah, I'm Lexxin from Texas, and I go by shortened form Lexx
Just thought I should add that.

[The Cartographist]

Lexxin,
Welcome to the Guild. I think that you'll find this a very hospitable place to hang out. And a GREAT place to learn any of the software-- there are numerous tutorials around, as you might be aware of depending on how long you've been lurking. There are also a bunch of knowledgeable guys willing to answer any and all questions.

Good luck, and we hope to see some maps of yours posted here in the coming days.

[pyrandon]

Hello, Lexx, and welcome! We have a few members who swear by Inkscape (and the GIMP, although I do not know which is in fact the simpler of the two).

If you have any of those old hand-drawn maps and a scanner, I and probably everyone else would love to see them. Caring is sharing, my friend!

Once again, welcome!

[ravells]

Welcome to the Guild, Lexxin! Funnily enough we seem to have more GIMP users here than Inkscape users, but I know that there are tutorials for both on the site. A very good resource for mapping with Inkscape is Jurgen Hubert's tutorials.

[Lexxin]

Thanks Ravells, the tutorial looks helpful. I've been kinda' skipping my way through the tutorials around here, still don't have much of anything that looks like a map. I'll just keep fiddling around.
And, pyrandon, I'll see if I can get some of my older maps scanned into my computer. Just gotta' remember where I put my scanner.

[RPMiller]

Please do Lexx, and welcome! While we tend to focus quite a bit on digital mapping, there are also a lot of great hand drawn maps here and think that often times the character of the map is more evident in hand drawn maps than the digital ones even if the digital ones are more "pretty to look at".