Dispatches From A Cartographer - The Beginning

[ravells]

lovely first map and as the others have said a great introduction! Not sure if this was intentional, but it may be worth considering distressing your text and labels so it looks like they were written when the map was drawn (and aged with it) rather than written perfectly on top of it and aged not at all, which suggests that it's all done on a computer and (IMHO) kind of destroys the beautiful weathered hand drawn effect you have for the rest of the map. The font you've chosen for the text and labels (again a very personal choice, I appreciate) is quite 'wedding invitation' Have a look at fonts like Humane Jenson, Francisco Lucas or JSL Ancient Italic which might be good alternatives to consider - they're a bit rougher than the one you're using but that may be to the good. Also it often helps to avoid pure black when writing labels and text on maps you want to give an old, slightly, hand drawn look to. A very dark desaturated red is usually quite a good alternative.

Have some rep for a great intro and a great map!