[WIP] Hand drawn regional map

[Meton]

Here is a project I started recently, a trial for a better looking hand drawn map with lots of details.

I have been drawing fictional map for years, but they have not been visually very impressive, and I have made more thematic maps than basic maps with labels, colors and legends. After reading through this forum I have got inspiration to try to make more artistic and better looking maps, so here it is. I'll keep drawing maps by hand, but now I have better paper, betters pens an bigger plans.

The map is about a country in the continent of Melero, which I introduced in the Finished maps subforum https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=39065. This was already a couple of years old project, but I it's nice to broaden and deepen the world, and it's a good starting point. The new map is about one of the eleven countries, still have to figure out the name (and all the other names as well). The paper is A3-size, and the scale of the map is 1:3 000 000 so the area shown is 816 km x 867 km. As a base for the style of the map I will mostly use an old world atlas from 1959. Elevation will be shown with contours and colours, I won't probably use any shading.

The attached image is a photograph of the situation now (sorry for the bad quality, I know it's hard to see anything). I started by drawing a grid which hepls the copying of the elements from the previous maps. (Previous maps were drawn to 7mm grid paper of A4 size, and here I drew 17mm grid). Then I copied the coastlines and rivers. It's now basically a sketch, the coastlines and rivers will have much more detail when I finish them. The goal is that in the end it looks like the old maps are a generalisation of this new map. Also the grid will be erased in the end, maybe I'll then add a new grid of latitudes and longitudes for visual purpose.

There is still a lot to do. I will continue with the copying of elevation, then adding detail to the contours and coastlines and drawing them with ink, then the same with rivers, and then all the cities, roads and railroads. After that I'm not sure whether I'll write the labels also by hand or continue with computer. Also I'm not sure should I do the colouring by hand or with the help of some software. There would be more to learn, I'm not even sure what software to use to colour a scanned image. We'll see.

[OldRed]

All the best, Meton. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product and how you will grow in this journey.

Sent from my ALE-L21 using Tapatalk

[Meton]

Thanks OldRed!

An update…

I copied all the rough elevation contours and started to make them more detailed, so they would look suitable for a 1:3 000 000 map. Drawing detailed and good-looking contours for mountains is difficult, so it has been quite slow development. I have spend some time looking mountains of same scale maps in real atlases, and I think I’m learning something. However, after some frustration with contours I decided to start drawing the detailed coastlines, and its great to see some clean lines instead of that messy sketching.

I’ve also spend some time thinking about the colouring issue. I googled about colouring scanned drawings in Gimp, and I think I could give it a try. I also have a question about that if someone knows: is it necessary that the scanned drawing is black-and-white? I thought that I draw the roads with red pen before the scanning, so I would have a black-and-red-and-white picture in Gimp to colour. Would it be a problem?

After deciding to colour with Gimp, I found out the existence of Copic markers. I think they would be a perfect choice for colouring by hand, a lot better than coloured pencils. I even tried them at a local book store and liked a lot. That would be however a certain kind of investment. Hmm, maybe I colour it both ways!

The attachment is a close-up of the eastern part of the map, showing the detailed coastlines and some contours also. One square in the grid is 51 kilometers.

[Veldrin]

Hey Meton!

First I'd like to say that I'm a "hand-made drawing lover" if we can say so. And I have to admit that the shape of your coasts seems wonderful to me; it's always hard and long to get what we want, I mean the perfect fit, the more realistic. And you did something really good.

I'm also working on a hand-drawn map currently which is exactly in this "level lines" style. It's pretty hard to me to draw the level lines correctly because, just like yours, my map is large scaled. In mountains, the height levels increase and decrease on a very short distance (you can guess a 20 km large structure with several summit reaching 3 to 4 km height for example). Thus the scale isn't right: I face the same issue. Let's wonder how to solve it...

For the scan, you don't have to do it b&w at all (because most of the time it loses quality). If you darken your lines with a black pen, then you can erase the pencil lines and get a very white background. Thus I think it's always better to scan in colors, especially if you drew color lines. I always scan in 600 dpi and I have a very high quality with a bright background.

And about coloring, I think your idea is good. It's often better to do everything by hand or everything on software in my mind (but maybe I'm wrong... it's just my taste after all). I use promarker markers and I guess it works well.

I'm looking forward to see the rest of your work ! Keep updating

[Meton]

Thank you Veldrin! I'm flattered by your compliment about the coastlines.

It's nice to hear that there are others here who also like to draw by hand and use this level lines / contours style. I agree that it's really hard to draw them to look realistic. In this scale map you have to generalize a lot from what you imagine to be the real contours, but still preserving the feeling of steep slopes in mountaineous areas. Sometimes you have to draw them really close to each others, which makes the colouring and the readability of finished map more difficult.

I have been continuing the drawing of this map, but I think I will wait until I have the contours and rivers ready before the next wip picture.

Thanks also for the advice about the scanning, I don't have to try to keep it black&white now. In fact, the map is b&w now only because the atlas whose style I'm following has coastlines and rivers drawn in black. I considered quite long to draw them with blue like in most atlases. But I think black is working well. However, I think I would now prefer to colour it by hand. It may sound weird but I think that I keep drawing by hand because I'm lazy. It's so straightforward to just draw to paper.

[Veldrin]

It may sound weird but I think that I keep drawing by hand because I'm lazy. It's so straightforward to just draw to paper.

Yes it's pretty the same for me ^^ but I also love the vibe it gives when finished. However, when I see some software-based stuff published here, I just stay stunned staring at it. Sometimes I feel like I lose my time instead of learning how to use photoshop and a graphpad. Look at this or this: you just can't do it by hand. In addition, only one mistake is enough to miss the entire map.

maps sources: Diamond, vorropohaiah

[Meton]

Look at this or this: you just can't do it by hand.

You are right, Veldrin, it’s hard to reach something similar with just doing by hand. But I want to try…

Some update again. There has been slow progress but I’m quite satisfied with what I’ve done.

First I finished all the coastlines, that was a fun thing to do. After that I drew the lakes, and I think I got just the right feeling that I wanted to the rugged coastlines in the southwestern area. It’s a bit hard to see now what is lake, sea or land, but the colouring will make it more clear in the end.

Then I continued with the contours. I was uncertain about the results at first, but got more confidence during the process. I’m happy with both the mountains and lowlands. The contours show the elevation of 100, 200, 500, 1000 and 2000 meters from sea level, probably. I may still change the numbers.

At the same time with contours I drew the rivers. The courses of the main rivers are copied from the old maps, but small rivers were drawn after the contours. I did quite a lot of those rivers, I hope it’s not a problem in the end.

So, everything concerning the natural environment is ready, apart from the bathymetric contours of the sea. I also erased the grid I used for copying. Everything is now ready for cities, towns, villages, roads and railroads. And after that labels and colouring.

The attached wip picture is now a scan instead of these blurry photographs. However, the problem is that i’ve drawn the contours with a hard pencil, which is really hard to scan. I’m still thinking whether I should also ink them or not, the best option might be a gray non-pencil pen, which I don’t have. The reason why the contours could stay as a pencil drawing is that in the end the idea is that the colouring tells the elevation, the lines themselves are not so important. So, I had to adjust the scanned picture a lot to get these contours visible, but still many of them are not visible, and there are also some irrelevant pencil marks disturbing. I hope the size of the file is not too big.

All thoughts, comments and criticism are welcome!



Something about the colouring issue also! After being an annoying customer and testing almost every pen in a local art supply shop, I decided to purchase a bunch of Sakura Koi watercolour brush pens. I like them a lot and I hope they will work well in the map. After trying them more at home however I was a bit disappointed with the colours I chose… I guess I’ll have to buy a couple more. It would be interesting to hear if anyone has some experience from these Koi watercolour pens.

And one more thing – I recently joined Instagram to share my maps, you can follow me @orbigraphia.

[Ilanthar]

I'm always impressed by this kind of relief map and I pull my hat to you for doing it. It looks really good and detailed, imo.

[Elterio Delgard]

Mmmmm... I to draw my maps with my own hands and pens, and I can tell you it looks promising. I may not be a specialist, but I would invite you to read also my thread "six maps open for critics". Alot of people gave me useful comments on how to improve stuff and I hope it will serve you also. For my part, I will follow your thread in hope to learn things through the comments people leave and to learn also from you.

In my opinion, I would thicken the coast line so as to seperate the ocean and the earth. It was recommended to me also a way back. Since you draw the map, you know the land and the sea, but others may have to observe a little more to be sure, especially when you have many archipelagos.

Your hydrography is something to be in awe of.

The shape is so irregular, one cannot regret that! Its great to avoid long and smooth coastlines or geometrical shapes. Must have been the result of redrawing no?

[Meton]

I'm always impressed by this kind of relief map and I pull my hat to you for doing it. It looks really good and detailed, imo.

Thank you! It might not be the easiest way to draw maps, but it's also the only style I have ever used. It's not as artistic and beautiful in the same way as the pictorial style most mapmakers here use!

Mmmmm... I to draw my maps with my own hands and pens, and I can tell you it looks promising. I may not be a specialist, but I would invite you to read also my thread "six maps open for critics". Alot of people gave me useful comments on how to improve stuff and I hope it will serve you also. For my part, I will follow your thread in hope to learn things through the comments people leave and to learn also from you.

In my opinion, I would thicken the coast line so as to seperate the ocean and the earth. It was recommended to me also a way back. Since you draw the map, you know the land and the sea, but others may have to observe a little more to be sure, especially when you have many archipelagos.

Your hydrography is something to be in awe of.

The shape is so irregular, one cannot regret that! Its great to avoid long and smooth coastlines or geometrical shapes. Must have been the result of redrawing no?

Thank you! I read that thread and it was interesting to read about your map making process. Thickening the coastlines is thing to be considered, but I hope it's not so big problem after the map has been coloured, so I think I will stick to this line width. I might be wrong, and I will know it only in the end, when it's too late to change it.

l like to be as precise and realistic as I can in the topography and hydrography, so it's nice to hear that it looks good. There has been some redrawing with the contours when I have not been satisfied, that's another reason why I used pencil with them. The coastlines and rivers were just drawn straight with ink. What helped me to create irregular coastlines was that I followed the general coastline of my former, more generalized small scale map and made the small variations so that the old map could look as a generalisation of this new map. In another words, when I drew the coastlines I didn't have to create everything from zero, but just to create the small variations, because the general shape was already defined (by me many years ago). After the experience I can say that it helped to achieve a natural result.