First steps..
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Nice work! You’ve got no reason to feel the ‘imposter syndrome’ thing - doubly so: no 1, you made a map so you aren’t faking mapmaking. Every one of us is at a different level of expertise, and no shame in knowing you’ve got lots to learn. In fact I gave you a ‘starter smidgen’ of reputation precisely for being willing to contribute! Second, the folks here who *are* pros are uniformly pleasant and helpful. I’ll take it you mean ‘pro quality’, not just ‘has made at least one map for pay’.
Suggestions- somebody suggested to me once that when the shading protrudes a bit below the bottom of left and right slope lines, it gives an illusion of being grounded, or attached better. Mixing overhead and oblique is always going to be slightly awkward; just accept that and drive on. If you ever want to make *all* the elements of s map oblique, that can work well, but it can be lots of effort to get looking right. My thought about your mountains is they’d look a bit better if a few visually overlapped one another. Having each and every one surrounded by white space keeps them from looking as natural. Too, your general shading seems to be light from NW, yet the hatching on the mountsins reads as shade, and is on their left. If it’s supposed to be snow caps, maybe make lighter?
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out plausibility improvements to your rivers. In general, smaller rivers join to form larger ones on the way to the sea, with the angle ‘pointing’ downstream. And you’ll seldom see a lake having more than one permanent outlet, and any splitting typically rejoins right away: islands happen, but outright splits are scarce, and heading two different ways to opposite coastlines, almost never. I’m hedging all those rules of thumb because they aren’t absolute- even on our mundane little planet there’s SoMe exception to about any rule. Thing is, one gets a better looking, and more subliminally acceptable-to-viewer map if you major on plausible effects. If you have story-specific reasons for some oddity, knock yourself out, and ‘“because, magic” is legit, if a bit over common.
That’s a graphical example of a storytelling truism : hoard your oddness; readers/viewers have a certain level of disbelief they’re willing to suspend, so you want to use only odd stuff that advances the story.too much and the viewer just won’t buy it... maybe not even aware they quit believing six pages back, or at the third ‘geology doesn’t work that way’ element.
Not saying you need to achieve perfection - there’s probably such a thing as TOO perfect :-). Just do what you can and ask questions to learn more. Tell ya a secret - even the experienced mappers among us regularly learn something from less experienced guilds people :-). I think you already do a good job with hand drawn work.
