A physical world map of Pangarap

[Tiluchi]

It's been quite a while since I last posted on here, mostly since my last thread got to the point where I was happy with my geology, geography and climates (at least on a worldwide scale), and I turned to doing more worldbuilding things like historical maps. I also switched my master map over to Illustrator, as I finally saw the light and realized that making large-scale, zoomable maps with lots of layers in raster form is a terrible idea.

I'm back now though, as I decided to follow through on my long-time goal of making a presentable physical map. I'm hoping for it to turn into a physical world map with hand-drawn shaded relief, similar to what National Geographic used to do before they went for a more digital style (which is less aesthetically pleasing imo). The only problem is that I have essentially zero experience in doing artistic maps on a computer, or any other kind of art really, so it's quite a steep learning curve. The main inputs are the elevation and climate maps I made in the thread cited above, and making the map means picking decent realistic colors for each climate zone and (this is the hard part) drawing the shaded relief on top of that.

Nonetheless, I'm rather happy with what I've got so far, although I've got quite a ways to go:



And here's the full-size map, less that screenshot trick you into thinking I'm anywhere close to being done:



Suggestions are welcome, especially if anyone has experience drawing shaded relief! Especially since I have, and I cannot stress this enough, no idea what I'm doing here.

[shadixdarkkon]

I wish I could help more, but all I can say is that this looks amazing. Fantastic work.
What is your method for doing both color and shading? Do you use multiple layers?

[Kellerica]

Those reliefs are looking very nice already. Are you drawing them freehand or are there some assets you're using?

[Tiluchi]

Thanks all! It's a somewhat laborious process, which may be why I haven't seen too many attempts at shaded relief on here... Basically a combination of a climate map for figuring out the colors, an elevation map for the topography, and then a shading layer in Overlay mode in Photoshop where I actually draw the shaded relief in black and white.

Posting a quick update- I had to redo this many times until I arrived at a style for higher mountains I was happy enough with. Getting into a very rugged area in the central part of the continent now, so this should be interesting...