I've been drawing castles and soldiers since before I can remember and I've never really stopped. Medieval history, architecture and so on all fascinates me. I still love the stuff and really enjoy visiting old castles, towns and so on. I can't get enough of it. In fact, if you look at my Pinterest account you'll notice I mostly pin "aged architecture", as I like to call it.
From my age-old hobby of drawing soldiers fighting on battlefields (around the occasional castle and village) has evolved a slightly different form of art: cartography (drawing maps - fantasy maps in my case). Cartography is a lot of fun for me. I somehow really enjoy drawing villages, castles, etc, from a bird's eye view. They're almost always medieval or renaissance or around that era.
Now, I didn't just start drawing maps yesterday - I've been doing cartography for fun since around... hmm... let me check. Oh, since before June 2013!
From my age-old hobby of drawing soldiers fighting on battlefields (around the occasional castle and village) has evolved a slightly different form of art: cartography (drawing maps - fantasy maps in my case). Cartography is a lot of fun for me. I somehow really enjoy drawing villages, castles, etc, from a bird's eye view. They're almost always medieval or renaissance or around that era.
Now, I didn't just start drawing maps yesterday - I've been doing cartography for fun since around... hmm... let me check. Oh, since before June 2013!
On the right you can my earliest photographed map drawing - or one of them. I remember once copying a map from a Spiderwick Chronicles book (I loved those back then). This one here was my plan for my Minecraft mega-project, The Three Kingdoms. The project never got anywhere, but I enjoyed this part of planning it. I also had a lot of fun thinking about some of the lore and whatnot. Still do! Ha.. Well. |
Fast-forward about two years and you'll see a bunch more maps. They're mostly more detailed views and close-ups of sections of villages and so on. I actually did a few as free commissions at some point, which was cool. I wouldn't mind doing that again at some point. If you want me to draw a map for you, I most likely will (contact me and we can talk about it). Anyway, let's look at a few maps from 2015... | A slideshow of maps from 2015. More variety than previous years! (above) |
2016 is the best year yet for my cartography. I also started sharing it on some Google+ cartography and map-making communities, where I received a very good reaction and a lot of encouragement. Some even said they'd pay for the maps! I should have done more of my messy A5 pencil drawing maps, they were fun and had the best response from the people on Google+ (and the Cartographer's Guild forum). | |
2016 is also the year in which I learned the most about cartography. The man who made the maps for Game of Thrones (Jonathan Roberts) has a website/blog called fantasticmaps.com and I read a few of his tutorials. Have a look at his website if you want to learn a bit about cartography.
In 2017, however, my mapmaking output has slowed down. I've been busy with college and planning my escape (which went well, thank goodness!), which has distracted me from my cartography hobby. I did make a couple of maps in the past few days though, so let's look at those. Oh, college is over, by the way... I'm most likely going to be drawing a lot more from now on. | |
The map of the castle was my first in ages and also the first map I drew with a fountain pen. I recently bought a LAMY Safari fountain pen on Amazon with some black refills. I felt a cartographer from bygone years drawing a map of a small castle he'd visited (with a fountain pen), which was nice. I also drew the interior with my fountain pen. And yes, I'd recommend it.
Hmm. So that's it so far. I haven't posted anything on this blog for nearly nine months, so it's high time I posted something. So here you are, a big blob post (haha) about my cartography hobby. I'll probably write another post soon about my even older hobby of drawing aged architecture, but don't hold your breath (9 months, remember!)
Hmm. So that's it so far. I haven't posted anything on this blog for nearly nine months, so it's high time I posted something. So here you are, a big blob post (haha) about my cartography hobby. I'll probably write another post soon about my even older hobby of drawing aged architecture, but don't hold your breath (9 months, remember!)
Okay, thanks for reading! If you read all the way to the end, well done - get yourself a free small map drawing - contact me.