Hand labelled map

[Mouse]

We are all so used to adding text using some very powerful software tools - tools that can curve the text, tilt it, make it three dimensional, colour it spectacularly, drop shadows from it, turn it inside out and upside down. There are an amazing number of fonts to chose from as well, so if you don't mind spending hours and hours looking at all the font sites you can have any kind of text you like, but....

There can often be something missing from a map where the text is so mechanical and always perfect.

I would like to draw a map and try adding all the labels by hand - just to learn something from people who can do it better than me, by all of us (who want to do it) doing it at the same time in a challenge, perhaps.

Since the map would be all about labelling things, then we'd better make it a dungeon, a single level of a building, or a very small hamlet map - something with the potential for as many labels as possible. The challenge won't just be about the best handwriting, but about the choices made as to what to label, and the placement of those labels.

I realise that unless you have a tablet, and can label things by hand using the tablet, this could be a non-starter for quite a few people who have never drawn a map on paper and uploaded a scan or a photograph of it to the Guild, but nevertheless I think that drawing the labels is a skill that almost as important as being able to draw a decent mountain or a tree, and worthy of equal consideration.

This idea was inspired by Jo's Village of Llewyn map. I happen to like the hand labelling on that map - especially the charming way the names of the buildings are curled almost protectively around them, but that is just my taste

Anyone else want to have a go at this with me?