Content

• Steps
• Part 1 of 3: Preparation
• Part 2 of 3: Drawing the Map
• Part 3 of 3: Additional Information
• Tips

Have you ever had the urge to make a map for your fantasy story, or as a personal reminder of a place you've visited? Just follow this tutorial and you will be on your way to becoming a real cartographer!

Steps

Part 1 of 3: Preparation

1. 1 Determine why you need the card. Before taking up your pencil, think about how large you need the map. Are you planning to draw a map of the entire planet? Hemispheres? Continent? Countries? Cities? Keep in mind that this moment is relevant both for real maps and for maps based on your imagination.
2. 2 Decide on the ratio of water and land on the map. With rare exceptions, you will have to draw a map where there is both water and land. However, it is up to you to decide exactly how much of both. The larger the scale of the map, the more you need not only rivers and lakes, but also seas and oceans.If the scale of the map is small, then you can get by with a couple of rivers or ponds and a shore, say, an ocean. If your map shows the islands of the archipelago, then, of course, you will have much more water than land.
3. 3 Think about what will be on your map. Actually, what kind of map are you creating: geographic, physical, political, road or some other? The type of map will largely determine how you draw it, so it's best to decide on this before you start. Of course, you can draw a map that will combine all types of maps, but in order not to turn the reader's head in the abundance of information on the map, you will have to reduce the number of details.
   • In principle, any characteristics can form the basis of the map: trade routes, population density, languages ​​of the local population, and so on.
4. 4 Decide how detailed your map will be. You will have to think about this at about the same time as about the scale and the contents of the map. The main thing is to think. Are you going to mark only the most important things on the map? Do you want to map everything, down to the smallest detail? How detailed your map will be will largely determine how large (in a physical sense) it will turn out, how much paper you will need to create it.
5. 5 Think about the weather. This, of course, mainly concerns those who draw fantasy maps, but taking into account the weather is always useful, especially when it comes to planning, so to speak, the physical aspects of the map. Are you going to have a lot of dry or rainy regions? Will these regions correlate with the position of the seas and oceans, mountains, the planet itself (how, in fact, do they relate in reality)? You may even have to think more than thoroughly about the climate and weather of certain regions before you start drawing a map to make it more detailed and realistic.
6. 6 Choose how you will draw the map. Paper? Computer program? Online map maker? Each of these methods requires a different approach, especially the first - the method of drawing the map by hand. As for online programs, you can find dozens of map generators, but this is rather an option for the lazy and those who are not confident in their own artistic abilities.

Part 2 of 3: Drawing the Map

1. 1 Draw the continents. If you have already decided on the details of the map, then you should have a pretty clear idea of ​​what continents (or land in principle) you will have, how many there will be, and what size they will be. Start with rough sketching with straight lines, then make the outlines more detailed, more curved, thus depicting the banks and boundaries.
   • When dealing with continents, imagine where there are tectonic plates (real or imaginary) beneath them - this will help you make a map that looks more realistic, especially if you are drawing an imaginary world.
   • Don't forget about peninsulas and islands, archipelagos, river deltas, bays and all that.
2. 2 Take care of the water component of the map. Yes, everything around the continents is oceans and seas. However, there must be water in the continents as well. What about rivers, lakes, seas, bays, canals? And if the scale allows, then why not draw also ponds, streams, springs and other small bodies of water?
   • If some body of water is very small, but very important, you can mark it with a dot on the map and give a comment that the scale does not allow depicting that place in its entirety.
3. 3 Add details to the continents. Depending on the style of the map, you can make the continents both rich in detail and much more modest in that regard. Nevertheless, it is impossible without details at all. For example, add mountains and mountain ranges, valleys, deserts, forests, plateaus. Considering the weather and climate, draw jungles, rain forests, swamps, tundra, grasslands, and coral reefs.
4. 4 Mark countries and cities on the map. Again, it all depends on the style of the map.Again, absolutely nothing without cities and countries is impossible - at least a few of the largest cities and country borders should be drawn. Borders can be drawn with simple lines, and they can both repeat the contours of natural borders (mountains, rivers, seas and oceans), or be fictional inside and out. You can mark cities with any symbol you like (most often dots and stars are used).
5. 5 Color the map. This step will allow your map to transform, and for the better! Color on a physical map can mean one thing, on a political one - another, although you can always use color for purely decorative purposes. If you decide to do without colors, then use at least grayscale. You can use many colors at once (to indicate all the features of the map), or only 2-3 colors for basic symbols.
6. 6 Sign the card. Of course, from a purely technical point of view, this step is optional, but it's better with signatures than without them. You can start with the names of the largest and most important regions (by the way, they can be highlighted in bold or larger text). If you want to make the map more detailed, then use more captions. You can use different fonts and different styles.

Part 3 of 3: Additional Information

1. 1 Prepare a legend. A map legend is essentially a dictionary that explains what a particular color or symbol on a map means. This will help the reader (more precisely, the viewer) to understand what is indicated by this or that symbol, why you chose that particular color and not another, and so on. Be sure to include all the symbols you use in the legend so that your readers don't get confused!
   • The legend is also sometimes called the key of the map.
2. 2 Add a scale bar. With its help, you will let the reader understand how many kilometers are hidden in one centimeter of the map. The scale ruler can be a small ruled line at the bottom of the map (but always with an explanation of the scale). To convey the scale more accurately, you can draw an additional map at an enlarged or reduced scale. However, you can do without a ruler, simply by writing the scale on which the map is drawn (for example, 1 cm - 100 km.).
3. 3 Indicate directions. To do this, somewhere in an empty space, draw a compass with the signed cardinal points - north, south, east and west. This is especially useful if your map is oriented ... out of the box, say if north is somewhere below.
4. 4 Draw lines of latitude and longitude. Of course, they are not required on maps of fantasy worlds, but they are needed on all maps with a claim to reality. These lines divide the map vertically and horizontally, thereby forming a grid of coordinates, which allows you to find certain places on the map using their coordinates. These lines should be straight and equidistant from each other.
5. 5 Enter the time and date. What is depicted on the map (physical and political) tends to change over time, even in fictional worlds. Accordingly, you need to indicate to which point in time what is shown on the map belongs to. You can also indicate the date when the map was drawn, although, of course, it is more important to indicate the date or the period of time to which the map belongs.
6. 6 Add any other necessary comments and explanations to the map. There is nothing wrong with writing comments like this! This is optional, but useful, especially if you've drawn a map of a fictional world. As a rule, the explanations are located at the very bottom of the map.

Tips

• Sketch your map first on a rough draft, then transfer it to good paper.
• If necessary, map the population concentrations before drawing the map itself. This will help scale up and achieve the overall effect. Whatever you do, do not draw every little detail before you are satisfied with the whole.