Finished map

It has been a while but I had posted a couple of times about a map I had been drawing about some fictional location.  I have only uploaded a few teaser photos so far but the project is done (except for maybe a few touch-ups).  I drew most all of the lines freehand and then scanned it into the computer.  There I used Photoshop to copy some trees and hills around to fill in some empty spaces.

 Next up I added color to the ocean and land masses, this happened on two separate layers.

 Next came the shading of individual portions of geography.  Each of the different types of trees got its own shade of green and I shaded the mountains grey as well as tan deserts/fields.  Rivers got a blue treatment as well but the lakes received a shading effect to simulate depth change.  This all happened on the same layer; the ocean and grass has changed shade because of a 50% transparency layer above them.

 Next I added city and geography names.  Because I didn't want to spend a lot of time coming up with lame names I got online and looked up Welsh, Irish, Gaelic, Icelandic, and Greenlandic names for the five areas (notice the border drawn on the largest island).  Because they are real names and words I know the translation of them all and placed them accordingly, like Fionghuala being the name of the massive glacier to the north because it is Gaelic for white shoulder.  To keep this all straight and to make organizing easier I made a folder for each family of languages.  I also placed dots for each city at this stage.

 Finally I put an image of faded paper over the whole thing at 50% to create the old map feel as well as blend all of the shading together.  Sure it is a somewhat pointless project and it took a lot of time but I had fun drawing and inking it and it was a good exercise in different techniques.