Nonameland - An attempt

[furiousuk]

Whilst I have been lurking here for a good while this is my first started thread as I wanted to try and get a map to a level where I can call it finished - so this is my first map post!

I'm going to be following a tutorial by Rpgmapmaker to create this map, but so far I have followed part of a Jezelf tutorial to create this basic alpha map sketch of the landmasses I'm going to embellish.



So far I haven't gotten far, here is the map coloured and stroked



I'm not particularly choosy for the shape and layout of the landmasses for this little project but needed to do a little tidy-up of some of the coastal areas and remove some tiny lakes (these will be added differently later) to leave me at this stage:



The red area was originally a large lake that is very close to the coast. It seemed unrealistic to have such a large body of lake-water separated from it's ocean brother by such a small strip of land so I opened up a channel to allow it to flow out to the sea (or become part of the ocean as it is now). But I'm not entirely happy with it, I'd quite like it as a lake. So I'm asking for the advice of the experts: should I move the lake further away from the shoreline? Or would some sort of large river exiting the lake and feeding the sea be acceptable? (I can't figure out a way this would happen) Of course, I could leave the land as it is now, I did a quick textured stroke-map to see it in a different way:



Now, when drawn like this the lake becoming part ocean seems like the best way. I'm not drawing the map like this though, it was only to see what it would look like to help make a decision

Anyhow, any opinions on what to do with the water in the red would be gratefully received. As I say I'm not overly concerned with how the land shapes end up but this little query seemed to burst out of the canvas demanding an answer!