All right, what I like to do is keep the black version of the map on it's own layer. In PhotoShop you can use ctrl click on the layer tab to select all, this way you can paint away like mad, and never go out of the lines so to speak. If you do paint out of the lines, you can always select all on the layer, and then clear on the layer you painted on. So keep you black map silhouette on one layer, and keep your art on another layer.

Now on my maps, I like to take a cartoon like approach. I love game maps more than anything, so mountains are huge, buildings are huge, sand dunes, are huge. So you can see I painted some gigantic sand dunes, these aren’t to scale, but are they to let the viewer know this is desert, above this I plan to add more clam dessert, with a few plants and some big cactus and stuff. I go about this as an illustrator would, conveying as much info through art as I can, which hopefully will mean I won’t need a legend when I’m done. =]


If you have any quesitons, let me know, or if if you want me to explain somethign better, I've odne this for so long I don't always know what needs to be explained.

Usually I build a grid system for messurments and stuff too, but I'm not going to with this map.