Hello, everyone. I've been a map fanatic since I was a little kid. I really like whimsical maps, i.e. maps that may not be to scale with certain landmarks or features exaggerated for emphasis and/or depictions of residents of the map going about their business.

My love affair with cartography started when I was about five years old and my family took a tour of Bellingrath Gardens. (http://www.bellingrath.org/component...map/Itemid,82/) At the door, they gave away a neat little map of the estate. It was a cartoonish depiction of the park with bright colors showing the little winding paths, larger-than-life items of interest and happy characters enjoying their stroll. It wasn't realistic or to any kind of scale, but even a little kid could find their way around the gardens using it.

I'm still something of a luddite. Although I am trained in computer graphics and my job calls for me to create graphics primarily on the computer, I still prefer the feel of drawing by hand. The best Wacom in the world just can't compare to pencil & paper.

I've had a chance to look around the site and love what I'm seeing so far. I hope to start posting some of my own maps, soon. Since most of them are hand-drawn and quite large, though, I'll either have to draw some digital maps or try to make some good scans of the physical ones.