Lands Surrounding Sindar

[Arimel]

This is my third pen and paper map that I have drawn. Being used to using pencils, this map was used to help ‘perfect’ my shading ability and to find presentable methods of displaying the different terrains. The differences in the methods I attempted can be seen in the two mountain ranges where I used differing amounts of shading (although there are other areas with differences). As a result, the map does not connect together as well as I would have liked it to. This was also my first attempt at putting labels on a map.
The map was done entirely by hand and then scanned into a computer where it was cropped slightly to help hide the imperfections of the scanner and the bad alignment of the map in the scanner.

Any feedback would be appreciated for use in future maps.

[David South]

Hello Arimel!

This must have taken some time!

Some comments I had are:

The names are a bit on-the-nose. Green-Wood Forest, Stinking Swamp, The Unknown Lands, Sky Reach Mountains, Vacant Sea, all are pretty generic. Perhaps work on spicing up the names a bit.

The Sky Reach Mountains are a bit dark, and it took me a second to realize that there was text in them. Makes it a little distracting because there is so much going on.

I am not a fan of the compass rose. Perhaps that is just because my last name is a cardinal direction, but it seems too bland. I applaud not doing North at the top of the map, however.

A scale bar might be helpful as well so we can know what scale we are dealing with here.

Over all, I think you did a great job! Keep at it!

[Arimel]

Hello Arimel!

This must have taken some time!

Some comments I had are:

The names are a bit on-the-nose. Green-Wood Forest, Stinking Swamp, The Unknown Lands, Sky Reach Mountains, Vacant Sea, all are pretty generic. Perhaps work on spicing up the names a bit.

The Sky Reach Mountains are a bit dark, and it took me a second to realize that there was text in them. Makes it a little distracting because there is so much going on.

I am not a fan of the compass rose. Perhaps that is just because my last name is a cardinal direction, but it seems too bland. I applaud not doing North at the top of the map, however.

A scale bar might be helpful as well so we can know what scale we are dealing with here.

Over all, I think you did a great job! Keep at it!

I must admit that this map did take quite a while to produce.
As for the names of the terrain, I must admit that that is something I tend to pick out on other maps I see and I have no clue how I missed it when drawing mine. This is certainly something I will try to remedy, or at least lessen, in the future.
As I mentioned in the description of the map, I was trying different methods of shading for my mountains, which is partially why one is (at least in my opinion) under shaded and the other one is over shaded. I will try to find the thin line between these two types of shading next time.
The compass rose in this map is bland. This is mostly a result of me wanting to finish the map and, as such, speeding past the last thing to draw. In the future, I will certainly try to have the compass rose at least come on the same level of detail as the rest of the map.
Finally, when drawing this map, I didn't put any thought into scale, which is why there is not one. It is something that I had been considering for my next map though, and your comment just helps to reinforce that point for me.

Thanks for the Feedback!