Continental map of Nerrac

[Eld]

Hey guys,

I want to show you the map of my world Nerrac. I'm building the world for almost 5 years now and I am busy with the map since last year's Easter. I use a pencil and the Gimp software.

The map is the second version of my continental map. The first one was hand drawn and scanned but figured out to be too small for showing all the details I want it to have. So I made 25 shreds out of it, which I printed much larger and traced them on a new paper to get it sharper and more detailed. This new parts I scanned and puzzled them together.
It came out to be as much work as it sounds and it took me about 100h of work to get the new, bigger, more detailed blank map on the computer.

I did it this way for two reasons, firstly I like the hand drawn style and secondly I wasn't able to produce such a style at the computer at that time. Nowadays I'd start and try it with the software to save time.

The first picture shows the map with the political overlay as it existed last Wednesday, before I started to improve both style and content of the map.



The second image shows the map as it looks right now. I coloured the land, made a contrast on the coastline, added many countries and discovered how to lay a text along a path.
Also I added some empty space to the right where I wish to make the legend and that stuff.



I know, they're quite big, the real properties are 13700x8550px, as I wanted it to become a map suited for many details. If it's finished one day, I'll let it print and hang it on the wall above my bed.

Yeah, that's it. Feel free to comment, criticise and so on.
I'm especially interested in questions of colour. Are the countries too bright or not bright enough? Are the colours themselves suitable or is yellow just akward for a great nation?

Greetings,
Eld