Xiao continent - hand drawn map

[Meton]

Haven't posted any maps here for a while! Here's a commissioned map I recently finished. The map was drawn for author Brandon Varnell for upcoming novel series Severing Time & Space. The depicts the Xiao continent with its thirteen kingdoms.



- Hand drawn with Pigma Micron fineliners and Pigma Brush pen
- Coloured with Copic markers
- A3 sized "Paris" paper of reddish tan colour

This map was quite a fun commission and a challenge. The worldbuilding here is by the client, but the information was only in written form, so actual the layout is more my design. The world is inspired by Three Kingdoms era in ancient China, and the client asked for something ancient looking. For reference, I searched for old East Asian maps and in the end I think I found a quite good style to go with. I somehow managed to spend quite a lot of time thinking about what kind of paper to use. I knew some kind of background texture would be good, and I really wanted to draw the map straight into the textured paper instead of adding the texture digitally. I tried some coffee staining also, but result was usually too messy. In the end I decided to use this and I'm really happy with it. The Copic markers acted a bit differently than usual with this somewhat thin paper, but generally there was now problem. This was my first time drawing a map to something else than white paper and I'll certainly do like this in the future too.

For the compass rose the client had the idea of using the Four symbols for the directions. Drawing animals is not my best expertise, but in the end, it's always good to have exercise every now and then. It was also really interesting to study about these traditional creatures representing the directions in Chinese astronomy. Personally I'm quite happy and almost surprised how well it ended up.

The labels are added digitally by the client, so I left empty areas for that in the map. All the kingdoms, cities, seas and some other features will have names then, and there will also be a title in the upper right corner.

I'm happy to hear if you have some thoughts or comments!