Hello, the Guild!

I stumbled upon this site... at least, I think, a year ago, or possibly several, but being busy with other things I just lurked a bit on the forums and oohed and aahed over some of the fantastic works that have been done here. However, more recently I've started availing myself of a number of the excellent tutorials here a bit more seriously as I attempt to improve my ability to make pretty maps in the course of indulging my worldbuilding hobby. I'm just a little bit rabidly possessive of the worlds I dream up , so I've been hemming and hawing over what and whether to post maps up here for feedback where anyone can see them, but then an excellent opportunity came along in the form of the Jan '18 Challenge - it's a lot harder for me to get all 'mY pReCiOuS' over a world if someone else came up with most of the names in it! So I thought I'd give it a shot - although being rather novice, on the whole, I'd originally intended to find a Lite Challenge to get started with, the particular nature of the current main challenge seemed too opportune to pass up.

Thus it was time for me to make an account here - which also means it is an opportunity for me to thank some of the community members behind some great tutorials that have been a huge help to me in embarking upon digital map-making. RobA, Gidde, and wisemoon, in their work on the tutorials 'Using GIMP to Create an Artistic Regional RPG Map' and 'Hand-Drawn Map Tutorial (for the Artistically Challenged)', have opened the horizons wide to me on what was possible for me to do in GIMP with the old Wacom I'd made little use of until I started working from these guides - thank you so very much for making your knowledge and experience available in an accessible form.

Once again - hello to everyone! And thanks!