When I was a kid I loved making maps. I wanted them to look old-fashioned, or at least like the maps of Middle-Earth I admired so much. I stained them with tea. My parents even helped me burn the edges of them on the gas stove (well, mostly they did it and I watched). I'd also roll them up and put them in bottles to bury in the backyard. I remember one time that I insisted on repeatedly testing how waterproof a certain corked bottle was, so that my treasure map would remain tidy and dry buried in the backyard until it was dug up. I still hope that another kid lives at our old house someday and finds my maps!
A lot of the maps were of Naomiland. If you've ever wondered why the title of this blog is Naomese, it's related to this. Naomese is the language spoken in Naomiland. I used to work on alphabets and cyphers for Naomiland as well as the maps. It never had much of a vocabulary, though any spoonerisms I committed were considered part of Naomese.
I had a fantastic time working on this. However, it didn't turn out how I'd hoped. The components aren't as well-integrated as I'd like, and I think the land mass part of the map needs more detail and maybe some obsessive text labeling. I do like the final color scheme though, and the colored pencil. I plan to be revisiting Naomiland, fantasy worlds, and map-making for more projects in the future.
The one below is an earlier version I was working on, before I figured out what I wanted for the borders. The original components were done in watercolor, gouache, and colored pencil.
