My Very First Attempt

[rwelt]

Well, as the title suggests, this is the first digital map I've ever attempted. I followed the Saderan tutorial that I found here. The whole thing came out a little more washed out than I was expecting, and I did have a few problems, but overall, I'm quite pleased with it as a first attempt. My biggest problem was with the forests. I wasn't getting a green color to them, despite following the tutorial closely and that layer being filled with an appropriate color. After quite a while trying to figure it out, I discovered it had something to do with the Pattern Overlay layer effect, and when I played with that, I was able to get some color. Not entirely sure what the issue was, but I ended with at least a passable result. My other problem is with the more western of my two rivers, which resembles a poorly drawn number 3. It seems there's an invisible line connecting my starting and ending points, and on the western banks of the river, but still east of that line, the land is lighter than the rest of the map. Not sure what happened there or how to deal with it. The biggest problem is the northern landmass. But that is entirely user error. I thought I had the image sized so that just about all of it was on my screen, but apparently that mass was just off the top. Since I thought it was all visible, I never scrolled up to see it, and therefore it pretty much just suffers from neglect. Ah well.

I'd love to hear what anyone has to say about this, including pointers and/or constructive criticism. I'll probably never go back to this map, since I created it purely for learning purposes, but would love to know ways to improve it.