I completed another map over the past few months – and this one has some special distinctions. Namely, it was my first commission and sale! So, be it known that I do that now.

I started from sketch maps, place names, and some stylistic suggestions, but for the most part my own input comes in the artistry and execution. The layout, terrain, and languages are not my own. As I’ve gradually stopped tying maps to my own fantasy world and started drawing them as art for their own sake, it was interesting to put one together based on a set of stories belonging to someone else!

I used the opportunity to try some new(er) techniques, of necessity. I made the decision to do the entire map in black and white, which meant finding ways to distinguish different terrain types with shading and symbols. Grasslands got a light wash, with little grass symbols in two shades. I indicated deserts with a wavy dune-like pattern in very dilute ink. And water took on texture from rough brushstrokes. I also had to have some idea how to handle labels early on (rough though my own lettering may be).

One of the challenges was that this map depicted a region of continental scale. I indicate this by scale: the mountain ranges I drew here don’t reach the heights they do on other maps. I’m particularly happy with the mountains; I think their shapes and shading worked out nicely to give a rough, natural feel to their slopes. The scale of the map also made forests tricky. On a map like Zarmina, I could show forests – and their type – by color. Here, that was not an option. I did some experiments on scratch paper with shading ideas, but in the end I came back to my first idea: tiny trees. Tiny scalloped symbols for deciduous trees, tiny jagged angles for pine trees, and tiny swoosh-topped wedges for tropical palms.

This all came about thanks to my discovery that my superfine pen nib was terrible, but I had a second one that I’d never tried lying around. Turns out that one was much easier to control.

The mixed-up tree styles worked very well, giving me a simple mechanic to distinguish different parts of the map and giving this map something (so far) unique, in the way it divides the viewer’s attention from the larger, broader scales to the smaller, more detail-oriented bits. I also learned more about how the ink behaves in washes, and I’m looking forward to manipulating some of those effects in my next personal project – already underway!

I’ve been doing a fair number of fantasy maps lately, taking pictures of them, and putting them on the Internet. So, I’ve decided to give them their own section on my images page, and their own Picasa album.  There’s even a new one in the album!

I know I’ve liked to draw fantastical maps for a long time now. So, I should not have been surprised at how much fun I had producing a fancy version of a map for a world I’ve been working with for several years. I figured out techniques for drawing the shorelines, forests, and mountain ranges that I think were very successful. I used a lot of watercolor pencil washes, with india ink for lines.

Still, though I like it as an image, the product isn’t a perfect map. I made the decision to try and put in all the physical features before any points of interest of placenames, with the intention of doing so in an overlay. None of my scratch tests for such labels worked very well; I ended up putting labels on the map in postprocessing on my computer. Not ideal, but at the same time, it came out okay.

I had such a great time producing the map over the course of a couple of weeks worth of coming home from work, making dinner, and then throwing NPR on while I sat down with my pen and ink. (It was a very meditative sort of endeavor.) I have also been keen on trying to improve the map. Fortunately for me, Fiancée loved the thing and requested that I produce a similar map based on a template which she supplied to me. Well, then. I didn’t need a second excuse to start.

I worked primarily from the template; but I had leave to make some modifications such as putting detail on coastlines or changing river courses to be more realistic. I stuck with the same general techniques that worked so well for me on the first map.

This time, though, I planned a bit better. I noted the positions of the physical features; but I also included the major landmarks and indicated to myself where text labels would go. When I inked in the forests and mountains on this map, I left myself spaces for the labels. I practiced ink lettering on scrap paper, came up with a font style that I thought would be fitting, and this time put hand-lettered placenames directly on the paper.

I will be the first to admit that I didn’t succeed in all instances – this paper absorbed the ink in a very different way depending on whether there was a good base layer of pencil in place – but I like the results, in general. You can also see that this time I have added some carmine red ink to my repertoire, to add accents or denote features on the map (here, provincial boundaries from the template map). Another set of new features comes from a few special points of interest on the map. I will comment that inking a small symbol, such as crossed swords, on a large paper map comes with a particular set of challenges: ink is almost impossible to remove without leaving evidence, and so once I set about drafting such a symbol on the final image, I was committed to it! After all, I’d hate for one badly botched, critical item to ruin the whole work. (Happily, little goofs in the mountains and such simply add to the character of such an image!)

Just for grins, I threw on some other embellishments around the coastlines. You know: sea monsters and such. I’m particularly happy with this little guy.

I still have the map in my apartment and I’m thinking about whether I should add some kind of border, but I think I’m just going to let Fiancée mat and frame it however she likes.

Now I’ve just got to think about what cartographic project to do next…

I have been working on a map. It looks something like this:

The map consists of India ink laid down on top of a set of watercolor washes. (Well, technically, washes from some Derwent Signature Watercolor pencils – thanks to Robin for those!) This is actually my first excursion into something like this. I like the way the India ink sits on top of the paper, while the watercolor soaks in.

But now I have a dilemma: I’m trying to decide how, or even if, to label the map with place names. I have already digitized the map (eh, roughly…what I really need is a large-format scanner!) and have been playing around with labeling schemes on the computer. The easiest and clearest thing to do in digital form is to (at least partially) desaturate the map such that the colors are duller and the ink is perhaps 60% gray and then scrawl my labels over it. However, the physical map has fairly bright colors and the ink is, of course, nearly always black, which means that a sweeping label over those mountains or forests will not come out well. I think more experienced cartographers of fantastical lands than I would have done the labeling and the cartography simultaneously, so they could shape the trees and mountains around the words if necessary. But no, I had to go ahead and ink in all the forests and mountain ranges first.

Here is what I am wondering: if I get some, say, red ink and use my pen to write a sprawling label over one of those forests, will the ink sit on top of the black-inked trees and be generally legible? Clearly, doing that with black ink would result in an unreadable jumble, but would red cut across the existing features with enough contrast? Should I just stick with doing it all by computer? Or does anyone out there have a better idea?