The map I'm currently working on as a personal project is the island of Númenor, from J.R.R. Tolkiens stories. Apart from my first map here (yay!) it's also the first I've done completely by hand. It's drawing ink on A3 paper, I used a dip pen with drawing nibs. Also metallic pigment ink for the gold/silver (the silver doesn't really come out in the picture). I tried to make the geography a little more interesting than Tolkiens pretty barebone map by adding some forests, rivers and fields. The placenames and legend are in Quenya (and Adûnaic), since it's supposed to be a in-universe contemporary map (the placenames aren't that interesting anyway, the labelled parts of the country are basically called Northland, Eastland, Southeastland, Southwestland, Westland and Middleland).

I'm actually not sure if I want to do more with it, I kind of like the black and white look. Watercolour won't work because the paper is too thin and will warp (I wish I thought about that beforehand), but I'm thinking about scanning it at uni (probably do that anyway) and then add in some colour in photoshop. Scanning would also allow me to clean up all the small imperfections (had to scrape off some parts with a scalpel for that, I really learned to miss ctrl+z...). I'm also thinking about adding some more detail, like vineyards which are supposed to exist in the southwest, but I have no idea how to do them and all my attempts so far looked pretty bad.

It's a very different way to work than creating maps on the computer, but so far I enjoyed it (though next time I'll look for paper with a less rough surface, which makes working with fine nibs diffiult). I also apologize for the poor quality of the photograph, do you have any tips for photographing maps? I can't seem to get the lighting right at all - also the detail is pretty messed up. Or do you scan all of yours?


Any criticism/feedback is welcome

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