Quote Originally Posted by jbgibson View Post
Don't know if this it what is subliminally bugging you, but the fact is that all your delightfully-random rivers and coastlines are about the same fractal degree. Think "same jaggy-ness". Too, none of the rivers or coasts indicate the mountains and valleys have any systematic arrangement. Sure, one would find SoMe totally random features. But there would also be mountain chains, ridges, linear valleys and such, as well as strings of islands. You'd also see at least some smooth curves along coasts and watercourses both .

There's a lot of good stuff going on too - you're definitely avoiding the mechanical- regularity of a schematic map. Maybe just need more variety.
I think you're right when you say everything is really jaggedy; it's just something I have trouble avoiding when I go over the lines in pen. I now realize I should have done more smooth coastlines to even out the look of the map which I actually did do in a few places. However, the mountain placement isn't random since the mountain chain runs along nearly the entire western coastline due to plate tectonics. They're just not on there yet since that is the next step.

I'm not really sure what you mean by "avoiding the mechanical- regularity of a schematic map". I believe there is a lot of variety, you just have to check out my previously posted map, which will give you a good idea what the final map on this will look like since I use the same style. Maybe it's worth mentioning that the scale of the maps I do are continent sized, so more detailed features like valleys, canyons, etc... are not shown except large forests, plains, deserts, highlands.