Hey there!

My name's Sam, I'm 25, and hailing from central TN.

I'm an artist by trade, and have been commissioned to do several gussied-up digital maps for various individuals and companies-- but frankly, I love working with traditional mediums. Give me parchment ink and gold leaf, please!

But I was really inspired to join this community thanks to a recent outing with some friends of mine who, once they found out I had any skill in this map-making business, suggested that we should get together for a night of dinner, drinking, and Middle Earth. What an excellent crew, right?

So over the course of an evening, as we got uproariously drunk, we sketched, painted, aged and inked our first collaboration: a 24x36 recreation of the traditional LOTR map.

It was so much fun that we decided to continue meeting for other fantasy map-making projects, and I (only half-jokingly) refer to these bi-monthly all-nighters as our Fantasy Cartographer Society meetings. We've tackled a good number of others since then, and I thought it might do us good to take a look at how the real professionals go about their projects, learn new tips and tricks, and poll the audience for some ideas!

Glad to be here!