Hello all,

So in my quest to improve my map-making abilities (which here means drawing and using my own brushes), I've been running into the same problem over and over, which basically boils down to scale.

My first question is how much room (in pixels) do you normally give yourself to work with for a region? A continent? An entire world? What are some common scales (pixels to image sizes, and pixels to miles)? I know that second part can vary wildly, but any sort of starting point would be helpful information.

My second question involves making brushes and other pre-drawn icons. Should I start much larger and then scale down on the actual map? Draw a 300x300 tree, then shrink it to 20px wide when I draw? Or should stamps be drawn in approximately the same scale as the intended project? How well do things scale up and down? I use Gimp, and my experience tells me that scaling things around does not work very well, but again, other people's experiences and tips would be a big help.

Thanks in advance!