What if you made the legend to resemble a parchment or scroll? It could be as simple as a dark ornate border with a light parchment colour/pattern as the background, to an actual scroll-like shape. Just an idea.
Very nice map, BTW. I loved how you did the mountains, and the forests, and the water, and... well, pretty much everything about it!
Cheers,
Tim
Paratime Design Cartography
"Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?" - Groucho Marx
I think the background for the legend will have to be some sort of tanny, parchmenty color with lettering done in a color similar to the lines of the drawing. Also, a border of alternating strokes of black and tan like on the map itself. Ideally the legend would be an "unpainted" area to start with and then decorated, but not as much as the cartouche.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Thanks guys. That really helped pin down the style.
I went with a straightforward double line border. I made the interior 75% opaque over the sea to keep some consistency between the two and put some embellishment in the corners. The real breakthrough was to actually make it flush with the overall border of the map. That integrated it into the image a lot more and avoided having it floating in the middle of the sea for no reason.
I'm not sure when the map hits the shelves, but I'll certainly be showing it off over here as soon as I am able. Thanks once again for helping me through a sticky problem.
Turgenev - glad you like it! That one's pretty long in the tooth now, but the new map will be a lot more of that and in a very similar style.
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