The Low Countries & Periphery, c. 1584

[Will Phillips]

I've fallen into quite the historical rabbit hole over the past several years. So much so, my worldbuilding and RPG efforts have fallen by the wayside. During all of this, I've also been working on my hand-drawn mapping skills. It's been some time since I've worked on an ambitious digital piece.

Time to return to my Photoshop roots, then.

This will be a 24" x 18" map at 225dpi depicting the Low Countries (roughly today's Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg) and surrounding region circa 1584-ish.

My goal is to create a helpful reference work that will depict the region's political boundaries and primary cities as well as languages. In an inset, I'll be mapping the religious affiliations of the area along with IDing bishoprics and universities (these items being another indicator of larger socio-cultural trends).

All this is going to make for a very complex, dense map. So I'll have to be meticulous in my layout.

Should be fun!

Here's a quick WIP. I began this weekend by taking the shotgun approach and working on lots of little things in order to get the feel for the map. Moving forward, I've broken the map into separate working .PSDs and will be handing the geography and political borders first, then labels, and so on.