Calisdania

[Chick]

You might want also to check your forests, some trees are overlapping which isn't very aesthetic. Also aren't the river flowing from Big Tern Lake and the ones near Marshdell and Morport supposed to take a shorter way to the sea that they do at the moment? I would also try to add some white stroke or outer glow on some labels, especially ones on the forests. At print size, some would be barely legible. The landmass shape is pretty good...

Rivers do not take the "shortest way to the sea". That idea implies that the water somehow knows where the nearest sea is and consciously flows that direction. Water flows downhill, no matter where the nearest sea is. The person I am doing this for wanted the river where it is, so I deliberately placed hills along the eastern coastlands to provide the high ground keeping the river flowing southward.

Trees growing closely together do overlap from a somewhat side perspective, is this not pretty natural?

I agree about the outer glow. The labels on top of the forests and mountains do in fact have a white outer glow, but clearly it is not strong enough.

As for the land shape, it follows the general lines that my friend gave me. This is the first map where I have hand drawn the coastlines and the mountains instead of using a blob method. I looked long and hard at many maps posted here on CG for inspiration about coastline shapes and mountain shapes, and Max, yours are among the best, so if this looks the slightest bit like yours, I take that as an extreme compliment, because that is exactly what I hoped to accomplish. It was just freehand mouse scribbling back and forth across the smoother outline he provided.

Thank you for taking the time to provide such excellent criticisms, I really appreciate such help when I am still trying hard to learn.