Combine effects in a map

[CBJason]

So, one of the maps that I have been hankering to draw comes from a book I read where there was mention of a city ruin on an island. It intrigued me to imagine the island, and then what the ruin would look like. After a bit of google efforts and drawing out the island, from an aerial perspective, I am wondering how to highlight or spotlight the portion where the ruin would be, and to best illustrate the scene with a druid and a swordsman battling one another.

I can't post pictures yet (I think anyway...haven't tried), and I don't want to unnecessarily spam the forum with links to external sites, so in a bit of a quandry as to how to best explain with words, what kind of look this is. Hopefully the word spotlight helps to explain what I mean about bringing attention to the ruin within the city, within the island so the viewer can get all three senses of scale (island, ruin, and the courtyard within the ruin).

Anyone tried or done this sort of thing before?

[Tiana]

I would do it with an inset. So, I'd do the island with lots of ocean around it, then draw a circle where the ruin is, and put a matching but larger circle in the sea labeled 'ruin' with the closeup illustration.

Then the druid and swordman battling I would handle by doing it in the compass, legend, frame, or "name of the island" label as art flare.

[CBJason]

But wouldn’t the inset then cover most of the map part? I guess I’m having trouble visualizing the proportions of the entire scene. Like if I was drawing this on an 11x17 sheet, what portion would be river, shoreline, island and inset? 🤔

[Tiana]

Not if you allow enough negative space and use color or something else to tie areas together in the different zooms. You could also add a measuring illustration to show scale on each one of them, indicating this is kilometres, this is metres, etc.

Rule of thirds is generally a good one to work with.

[CBJason]

Ahhhh, ok, my mind went to an inset that was overlaid on top of the island - kinda like this:

[Tiana]

Nah, you want it to be beside the island, for example in that upper left corner would be a good place for it.

[CBJason]

I dunno....if I do that as suggested, the whole sense of the landmass being in a river seems to be lost as part of the larger scene. It's not just an island, it's an island in a vast river.

[rdanhenry]

You could always add another inset with a map of the river, showing the island's location.

[Tiana]

The way you've done it doesn't communicate 'in a large river' either. You'll need to pull back a little more to show the river's edge. I perceived it as 'close to two other islands' the way you sketched it.

Sometimes the right answer is "do more than one piece of art". You now have 4 different scaled items you want to include in this. It is impossible to get them all visible at one degree of zooming. To show that the island is in a river you must show both sides of the river and enough river to get the picture. In that case, I would put the insets not in the negative space, but in a large frame around the main map.

[Redrobes]

Its clear to me that you want to show several items in one page that have vastly different scales. You have regional river, island, locality within island, and then battle map all in one. I think if you can decide how to manage that bit then the layout of the page will be easier.

Digitally you can do this sort of thing with a zoom map but if you want to see it on a single printed page then you will have to split up the page into scaled areas somehow whether insets or otherwise.