The Civilized World and Known Parts of the Wild

[Lingon]

I've hit a bit of a roadblock in the steampunk map I started a little while ago (one could even say I lost steam), so I've started a new wip. This one is for a story I'm writing; first I didn't think I would need a map as it is set in a rather small area, but it grew quite a lot while writing and I'm beginning to feel the need for some organization of the locations. It's an alternate history story that takes place on the Kola peninsula, so I took a screenshot of a section of it from Google Maps, outlined the coast and rivers, printed, and transferred it to aquarelle paper with an improvised light box. Then I looked where the mountains are, and drew in the ranges (returning to the style I used in my first map, after some experimental maps of varying success…). I began inking too, but then I decided some opinions might be good before I make something irreversible.

So, here's what I have so far:
KändaVärlden1.jpg

I'm planning to cover most of the map with forest, and I want it to look really dark and dense and vast. But maybe it's too crowded with rivers and lakes for that? Maybe I should remove some of them. And the mountains, are they big enough? Thinking of increasing their size to make them look more intimidating, but I don't want them to be too out-of-scale either…

Well, those are my main concerns, and the rest should come later