Hello peeps

I'm a long time rpg fan, who started gaming around 20 years ago. I figured it was finally time to look into improving my map making skills in the digital medium. I've always drawn all of my maps by hand, and while it has always been satisfying, particularly since I enjoy the tactile sensation of drawing and writing, I've always looked at digital maps, drawn by good artists and felt a pinch of jealousy. I'm now learning the basics of photoshop'ing, as well as looking into some mapping softwares like Campaign Cartographer, etc to try find a way to build my own maps this way, and see if I can figure out my own style for them.

For gaming, I've been a D&D player for most of my gaming career, though it has shifted between edition. I play together with a small group of friends, plus my girlfriend whom I got interested in the games back when we started dating. We all love fantasy and a good story, which is why I started writing my own setting for our games. That's the main focus of my map making; there is a lot to flesh out and should provide a good workload to start with. One part of me that wants to make good and cool looking maps also comes from wanting to be independent from the game publishers. WotC are awesome but I've sort of grown out of wanting to spend so much money, investing in their campaign books that re-iterate every few years. I've set my eyes on our currect, 4E of the game and won't be buying 5E (whenever it comes out). I haven't even bought a lot of accessories to this edition.

Whatever I need in the world itself, I write and I read as few works from others to keep my imagination and creativity "pure" from influences, and I primarily work with a couple of basic books, PH 1-3, MM 1, and DMG 1. If I need more material, monsters, paragon paths, themes, or whatever, I write them myself. Now I want to add maps to that collection, which is why I'm here. I've browsed the forums and just been inspired by all the amount of awesome works of art that I see around here. I want to join the club