a guide to the world of fantasy . . .

a month or so ago i joined a swap on craftster.org and my partner had on her wishlist a totally awesome idea - a fantasy world map, that would include many different worlds of fantasy literature.  i'm a fan of many of these books, and so it was a no brainer.

here's the final product:

i'm pretty excited about how it turned out.  i enjoy duplicating type styles, so i tried to label the lands in relevant fonts.

some detail shots:

ACK! why are they rotating.  geez, blogger.  hope i can fix that.

anyhow, let me tell you how i got from the request to the final project . . .

first, i did some research.  i have read most of the books referenced, but not all.  shout out to the hunger games and game of thrones!  obviously, reading all the books would have been valuable, but not within time constraints.  so i talked to my fellow readers.
what was the book's environment like?
what kind of weather did they have?
was there water mentioned anywhere?  mountains?  hills?  dessert?
how large was the land?  how long would it take to cross on foot?

and then i did some searching to see if anyone else had already mapped the individual lands.  many already had some cartography done, but most that did had several different interprutations.  i had to go back to my experts to see which one best melded with their impressions of the books.

and then draw!  i decided to limit the details to basic land markers.  i had some lands with great detail and i could have really gone crazy, but the problem was with the lands that had very little detail to offer - i didn't want to invent information, and i also didn't want to leave those areas bare in comparrisson.  this way the labels popped more, and that's fine by me.  i used prismacolor pencils for the coloring, sharpies for the outline.

last was the destruction.  i ripped it a little, and wadded it up and beat it.  i used tea to discolor it.  completely nerve racking.

and that's pretty much it.  no in-process photos, so sorry.  i really don't like taking pictures in the middle of working.

jo