A Guide to Drawing Maps
A Guide to Drawing Maps Drawing maps is easy! With a little creativity and a strategy, this will take you on an amazing journey towards your finished illustrated map. Personally, whenever I work on any artwork, I have ups and downs, but that’s healthy! That means you are analyzing your work, nitpicking the problems, and working through different stages of your artwork. Imagine if we didn’t do that; we would never improve our art skills. Shesh, let’s not settle! Now, what is a custom map? Custom maps capture the spirit of a city, country, adventure, journey, freezing memories, and moments. When we think about illustrated maps, we envision colorful maps, fun illustrations, and quirky icons. As you continue into this blog, you will learn how to create your own map, what issues you will run into drawing maps, committing to your artwork, and acknowledging wins. How to Draw Custom Maps Some of the common places you can find illustrated maps are at restaurants, travel guides, amusement parks, movies, personal adventures and more. Now for the good part, how to start drawing your map with these 5 easy steps. 1. Pick your Location When selecting a location for your map ask yourself what area do you want to focus on, will it be a large area or a smaller magnified area. It’s important to have an idea of what you think will be important to highlight the area as well as mesh well with your map. If you are not ready then take some time to find inspiration through an icon, a stylized illustration, your favorite locations, or a place you would like to visit in the future. 2. Create a List The planning and research is done, now it is time to make a list. To start your list, divide it into two portions, the first section will include all of the landmarks and significant city treasures that will make the map recognizable. It can be an important city, park, water body or it could be an important street or highway. The second section will include all of the icons or areas you want to illustrate. For example if you are creating a map of your bikepacking adventure, you will list all the areas you stayed in, memorable moments, animal sightings, or everything you would like to include in your map to bring it to life. Ready to move on? Onto step three! 3. Add your Pinpoints Time to start adding your interest pinpoints. The easiest way is to draw the points on a regular map. I like changing the opacity of the map layer so it doesn’t look too busy. If you are drawing traditionally, use a transfer paper that will create the same effect. Now to analyze the points, sometimes a cluster of points makes it harder to add multiple illustrations in one area. Start drawing small circles where each icon will live, it will give you an idea of how much spacing you will need and now you can organize them. Now, if your map contains icons too far from each other, take screen grabs of each area and overlap them. Here are two options for combining each section, time to get creative: Create an illusion and connect roads, streets, parks and freeways Create magnified areas from a more extensive map Take a peek at the screenshot of my map area. As you let your eyes find the red pins, you will see they are pretty spread out, and others cluster together. The digital map below shows you how I shrinked my map. I used essential landmarks like parks, rivers, and freeways to make the map appear closer. 4. Start Drawing After all the pinpoint problem solving it’s time to start drawing your map! For those who have trouble getting started, try not to get caught up trying to make it perfect. You will start finding things you love and things you hate as you draw. If you’re drawing digitally, it can be more forgiving, but if you’re drawing traditionally, try to test a few smaller drawings to make sure you like the direction you are going in. The big question, should I draw every street on my map? No! Don’t crowd your map with every single road, side street etc. Save time by only adding major roads, roads most used or roads that your interest points are on. 5. Pick your Colors Your drawing is coming along, at this step your icons, your points, and major streets should be completed. It’s time to add color! If you haven’t figured out your color scheme, here are a few ways to figure that out. Choose colors by moods, pictures, scenes, or find fun color swatches. I also like to choose colors that I think would work well and start to experiment afterward. If you need some resources for color swatches you can use Pinterest, Instagram, Coolers, Canva and a lot more. Check out these inspiration images I gathered for my project. You’re a Map Creator! Congrats! You’re done, you finished drawing, creating your icons, and picked your colors. Now it’s time to take a step back and find things you like or don’t like, and be your own critic in the healthiest format. We want to grow and become better artists, not put ourselves down. Sometimes when I finish an art piece, I will create new layers so I can experiment on colors some more just in case. Challenges with your Illustrated Map Here is the adventurous part of your illustrated map: the issues you did not expect. I’ve added a few of the issues I’ve run into, that might help you in the future! The first issue that I had to solve with my map was how I would fit all of these icons on one map on a canvas size of a 3:2 ratio. I started by drawing the entire map and working through issues. I drew pieces of the map and combined them but