Whenever I need a break from staring at the computer, I usually end up either grabbing my sketchbook or whatever musical instrument is closest at hand. I had a hankering to break out some drawing materials that I haven't used in a while the other day (and since this is a board for art and cartography and not recordings of sea chanties played on a ukulele or bad punk guitar), so I decided to do a map the old fashioned way.

I'm always interested in seeing how stuff like this progresses, and I figure that there are probably one or two others out there with a similar interest, so I'll be posting up the work-in-progress shots as I do it.

Here's where it stands right now. It's done on watercolor paper, since I plan on coloring it with watercolors when I'm done. The sketch was done with a plain ol' 5H pencil. I tried using one of my blue Prismacolor Copy-Nots, but it was just too light.

I'm inking over it with a crowquill pen. I'm using my favorite of all nibs, the Hunt 99 Drawing tip, which I prefer vastly over the more popular Hunt 102. (The 102 is a bit finicky for me.) The ink is Speedball Super Black.







You can see that I don't sketch in a lot of details; I usually don't when I'm inking my own drawings.

I should have the inking portion done in a few days, and I'll post up the finished b&w version before I start coloring.