Welcome to Keltorin!

Whilst writing my story I realised that to help me and my readers get a better understanding of the layout of the world I was describing, that I should create a map to use.

However I am not an artist by any measure of the term, so when I set out to draw this map I had no idea what I was doing or even how I wanted the world to look.

So what do you do when you have no idea how to do something? These days you go to youtube and watch some tutorials on map drawing of course! So that is what I did and after getting some basic pointers, I felt as though I just had to put pencil to paper and see what happens.

I started lightly scratching out the basic shape I wanted and as time went on I realised the the continent at the top continued and that I needed more space for the story to develop properly, plus enough space to house all of the people and places I wanted to create and so the second page was started.

Next I went over all the outlines and made sure I was happy with the look - trying to make it look realistic isn't easy I'm a little OCD and like things to be perfect and even and balanced - not really what happens in nature. In the end I was happy with the shape and I moved onto the mountains, rivers and forests.

Then it was crunch time I started going over it all in ink, then I decided last minute to add colour to it to try and give it more depth and character. I watched some more youtube tutorials and found out that if you darken the lower portion of your land masses, whilst unrealistic they look nicer and make the image pop more - after my attempt at this method I think it improved on the overall look and feel of the map.

Map of the Known World of Keltorin

A closer look to focus on the different countries featured in Keltorin.























Here I have begun to layer in addition details pertaining to different sections of the story.

















Aditional evidence it exists in the real world and not just in my imagination.

All images are linked to my steemimg map gallery and are only available on steemit.

In the end this map took me around five days to complete and my hand was in agony, but I think it was worth the effort I now have a permanent reminder of my world sitting above my desk for inspiration and reference.

I included the map in my very first post on The Kingdom of Valcanne's Guide to Keltorin - World Map, Histories and People. and have used it many times now for different reasons.

This is not the first time steemit has led me to step out of my comfort zones, but this is definitely the furthest I have strayed into unfamiliar territory.

Tonight I was rewarded by having an artist I follow @opheliafu comment on my post (after I had been fan stalking her posts since I found them) saying she hadn't realised they were original work and encouraged me to do a post on them alone focussing on them as art, so in the spirit of this movement into pushing my boundaries here I am submitting my maps to the art and steemit tags - let's see how this goes!

I would really love to hear some feedback and any advice or constructive criticism is always greatly appreciated.

Like what you've read so far?