Okay, get yourself one of those nice vegetable trays at the grocery store. Whatever's local, whatever they serve in the deli section for small parties, but it has to come on a roughly 12 inch/30 cm plastic plate with a lip. Now, eat all of it. You need your strength for fictional cartography.
The purpose is to clear the plate of food (carrots, celery, sushi, little tiny sandwiches, whatever you bought at the store). Now clean it in the kitchen sink. The dish is now our paint dish, a big flat surface that can hold a layer of water and paint.
Now, get a sponge. My preference is for big chunky sea sponges with lots of natural texture and holes. You can probably even use wadded up paper towels, dish sponges, your hands.
I started with a nice brownish green and worked the map with reds and blues and browns to give it texture. Push the sponge in your plate of paint and press it into a nice sheet of watercolor paper. Outline the edges of the land, create mountain ranges, forests, seacoasts, swamps, all the fun stuff that your characters are to wade, slog, hop and run through.
Now scan your creation, bring it into your paint program of choice, Photoshop, PSP, Paint, Xara, Gimp, etc. Now you can draw in rivers. I used a white brush to cut through the land areas with squiggly lines, pooling here and there for lakes and ponds. Have fun, play with filters, textures, layering, and other effects.
You can draw in place names before you scan or you can print out the completed topo map and write them in afterwards. Of course, you can always do the lettering in your paint program.
I love maps. So, if you make any and scan and post them, I'd love to hear about it.
Happy mapping!
Click the pics to see them larger.
Links:
http://hollylisle.com/fm/Workshops/maps-workshop.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_world
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