Reunited Kingdom of the Fourth Age

[Sapiento]

A private commission.
It's from the reign of Aragorn's grandson, Anormegil (or Anarmacil in Quenya), c. 250 Fourth Age, by which time Lorien has been abandoned by all but a few Wood-Elves; Lindon and Thranduil's realm in n. Mirkwood remain, but both are dwindling. The Dwarves have managed to reclaim Moria and have a small colony in Aglarond, while the Hobbits still prosper in the Shire even as the rest of Eriador is starting to be repopulated by Men (a mix of Gondorians, Rangers, Bree-folk and even the odd Dunlending). Eryn Maethyr is a Mannish kingdom formed by the unification of the Beornings and the Woodmen of Mirkwood, and it may, in years to come, expand into 'East Lorien' as the last Elves depart.

Done in PS.

[snodsy]

Really beautiful piece, really like the additional elements of this one, border, key, scale, etc. The shading on your border elements really pop these off. And as alway your mountain as magnificent. Seems the rhumb lines don't align? not sure. Great job, thanks for sharing.

[ThomasR]

Your map manages to get the feeling that it's been printed in relief, like this ! And I'm just talking about the linework, the shading, oh the shading !!!

[Eilathen]

Hmmm...i'm torn.

I like the style per se (the artsy frame, the mountains etc all well done)...but i don't think the colors work for me. Too monochrome in all, imo...and then the red dots who totally break that, which underlines the disparity even more. My biggest problem are the forests that don't register at all. With that kind of red, a little green wouldn't have hurt, imo.

[SteffenBrand]

@Eliathen: I completely see where you are coming from, but I honestly think it works. You can try to take the red a little bit back and try to give it more of a golden / bronze look I see more fitting to the overall color palette, but I like both style and the map itself as it is, too. I recently made some fantasy certificates, I'll include two little bits of them in which you see the colors I mean:

Urk.jpg

A little nitpick from me anyway: You should try to align the compass roses in the water. If the lines meet up, it would not look as much as confusing / messy as before. A lot of lines come out of each compass rose, it should be easy to both align them and find a good spot for them. I would also cut the lines of the compass roses on the beach at the first line around the coast, not on the land itself. It leaves you with a bit more room for the eye to differentiate land and sea especially with a monochromatic map.

Best wishes, Steffen =)

[kacey]

I love this, I think the colours work beautifully together. The only thing I don't like about it is that I didn't come up with this colour combination, very well done!

[Voolf]

Beautiful map Sapiento

[DanielHasenbos]

Great map Sapiento, nice to see a Fourth Age map of middle earth for a change.

The only mistake I spotted is that you swapped Rhûn (east) and Harad (south) in the compass.

-Dan

[FrancescaBaerald]

An interesting and beautiful interpretation of Middle Earth. Great job!

[Caenwyr]

Hooo I love me a good Middle Earth map! Throws me right back to those dreamy years back in the nineties when I read the books. There was no rumour yet about any movies to be made, so paper was the only source of information we had on this magnificent world, and I spent long hours poring over the maps. Yours managed to capture that feeling very well!

I must say though that some comments I read here are indeed on-point. The one about switching east and south is the most obvious and should certainly be fixed (you don't want your client to end up with a map reading "north - south - east - west"), but there are a few others I would address as well.

1. Lining up the rhumb lines and having them stop at the line off the coast would be easy and would work wonders.
2. I don't mind the minimalist colour scheme you have going, but the map does look a little too dark to my opinion.
3. the northern and southern bits look particularly empty to me. If I recall correctly, these were empty in Tolkien's maps as well, but a good cartographer just invents things if he doesn't have data - hence the many "hic sunt dracones" references and fictive places on old maps. Just make something up that fits the area (like deserts in Harad and pine forests in twisting glacial rivers in Forodwaith) - anything's better than an empty blotch

All in all already a good map, but if you manage to address some of these issues, you'd surely jump from good to magnificent. I know this is a finished map and no one likes messing with these (especially if the client's already given their stamp of approval), but in cases like these where you're SO close to something truly great, it might be worth the effort.