My very first map, a dnd homebrew continent for my dm

[weatherhills]

Alright, consider me extremely intimidated to post on here!
Please bear in mind: I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Prior to starting this map, I hadn't drawn anything seriously in over a decade
and this is basically the first time I use my drawing tablet to actually draw and paint digitally. So Photoshop is still a terrifying wild beast I'm trying to tame.
That being said... I'm having a ton of fun. This is what it looks like for now:



Little bit of backstory for the map: one of my dungeons & dragons' DM said he didn't have a map for his homebrew world and I heard myself say "I'll draw one!" before I could stop myself.
A lot of places are still unnamed and a lot of points of interest and features are subject to change because I pretty much just threw whatever I wanted wherever I wanted, just to practice drawing different things
and giving him an idea of how things would look in my still developing style.
He also really loves how this guild's very own MistyBeee does illustrated city medallions and asked me to do those for the 6 main settlements.

Anyway, here are some little snippets I like.



Things I'm undecided on/have no idea how to do:
What to fill the sea with. Some little waves? Some noise texture? Different colour to show depth? Those navigation lines you see on nautical maps? All of the above???
The frame around the map.
How to paint beaches/sand
The rivers placement. This seems to be a hot topic around here ^^
The legend and the frame around it...
How does one go about painting snow covered ground? I don't know but I'll need to find out.


Happy to hear comments and critiques from the community

[Andarr]

You are on a really good start here, i like specially the colors. As to the questions you asked, as fort the first three questions, there is no right answer, everybody has different approach to how to make it. I try to experiment with my maps and almost every time i do this features little bit differently and i am hoping that one day i will find the style that i will like the most.

As for the rivers, the basic rule of thumb is that rivers go from the mountains to the bigger land of water (lake, sea) they start thin and end wide. They never branch out into more rivers as you have it, only in deltas at the end of the river, but they can branch in, more smaller rivers joins along the way into the one big river. Dont make them straight, make some turns just as it would feel natural.

about the rest i cannot help you because i did not do legends on the map yet - maybe i should try! And the snow is also what i am struggling with, but since you are making colored map, the easiest way is to try to add more light blue-ish color to the areas... try to fidle with the layer opacity and maybe it will show some results!

Keep up the good work

[weatherhills]

Thank you so much for the feedback Andarr! And for saying you like the colours because this was not easy to for me to figure out.

I'll post more updates when I get a little bit of time to sit down and work on this.

[Ilanthar]

Looks promising! I suggest to do tests for the seas, you clearly have ideas about it already.
For the sand beaches, it's often pictured with dots. The legend & frame could be simple or not, depending if you want to add some information not shown on the map or not.
I think you should work the land near Cabras, the cliffs are nice but doesn't really fit with the surrounding lands right now (which are rather flat).

[weatherhills]

For the sand beaches, it's often pictured with dots.

Do you mean the outline of beaches would be dots or dots in the beach area itself as texture?

I think you should work the land near Cabras, the cliffs are nice but doesn't really fit with the surrounding lands right now (which are rather flat).

The cliffs were really just me wanting to see if I could draw cliffs. I wanted them to have a waterfall that would go down in a valley below, and where the water feeds the large marshes. I don't know if that makes sense and I'm not sure if I can actually draw all that with my current skills ^^' It might be a bit ambitious for me. Now that I look at that section of the map, I'm not satisfied witht the big river anymore, I think I can do better.

[Kellerica]

You're off to a fantastic start. Certainly way better than my first digital attempts ever looked like! PS can be intimidating at first, but it is a fantastic tool.
One piece of critique I have - the more pine tree looking ones around the mountains hugging forests look a bit off to me. It kind of looks like you have trees on top of trees

Other than that, this is looking really solid. I especially like the style of your mountains. Keep up the good work, and welcome to the Guild!

[weatherhills]

Excellent point about the trees, Kellerica. Funny thing is, I fixed that in a version of the map that crashed and it completely slipped my mind the next time I worked on it. So here's another thing I need to work on before I post an update.

[Ilanthar]

By weatherhills
Do you mean the outline of beaches would be dots or dots in the beach area itself as texture?

Dots in the beach area itself, like this :