Jan/Feb 2013 Lite Challenge Entry: "Missionary Journeys of the Prophet"

I am new to posting my maps on the Guild, usually I just doodle a bit and don't consider myself much of an artist. I decided to get some practice, and the contest seems like a good opportunity to work outside my usual methods.

I have decided to go for something like what you find in the back of a bible, with the minimal geographic information but tons of towns labeled. It's entitled "Missionary Journeys of the Prophet," and follows the ramblings of an as-yet unknown religious figure around an undefined Ancient World.

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I have re-toned the mountains & added rivers, and am in the process of adding civilization.
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Here's the map with cities listed. I'm looking at it to see if I want to do any editing, fixing, or fleshing out before adding in the journeys themselves.
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This is a really neat project...Not sure if it would clash with the style your going for, but it might be cool to add some texture in the water and color in the land forms.

I think it might indeed clash, but I would be willing to give it a shot and see how it looks - however, I'm new to many common techniques; could you give me some pointers on how to follow your suggestions?

If your using photoshop or a similar program, you can add texture to the water in a number of ways. The easiest is to simply create a cloud layer beneath your ocean layer and set the ocean layer to multiply or lower the opacity. (there are a number of great tutorials on this forum that will provide a number of different techniques...i'm also learning it so I might not be much help.)

A similar thing can be done to add color to your landmass. It would involve selecting the outline of those shapes and then filling them in a new layer with some color and then setting it to multiply. Again, lots of great tutorials.

I'm not sure about sea texture, but agree with anomiecoalition when he says you should color the land. The sea looks good for me this way (totally my opinion of course). Anyway, looking forward to see how this will finish.

Edit: Have you tried looking at the tutorials area? I'm sure there is one or two tutorials that show step-by-step how to add texture (probably with pictures so that makes it even easier to follow). I'm not sure if RobA's tutorial has it, but if you take a look at this subforum you may find what you need ;)

Ah, I was unclear. I am familiar with the techniques you are discussing. What I meant was, was there a particular element/color/style you thought appropriate to the current map? My usual techniques do not suit the current map.

I'd just like to see how it looks with a light brown thrown on top of what you have there.

Here you go;
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