So I can never get a sea painted without lots of horrible drying-lines and just general screwups. I have some new paper coming in tomorrow and I'll post up how that works.
When I tried to paint a map using watercolors that was my problem too. On your Gaelynta map you seemed to have solved it though?

I'm really glad you started this thread. I would love to make more watercolor maps, but till now after every attempt at it, I was depressed and hated the fact that I couldn't achieve the effect I was after. I hope your expertise will help me. Thanks for sharing what you've learned.