r/handdrawn_maps

My coworker wanted to surprise her husband with a map of the world he’s been DMing for her and a group of friends, so she asked me to make one for him.

As always, there are a few things I wish I’d done differently and little details I’d tweak in hindsight, but overall, I’m really happy with how it turned out.

I always get asked how long these maps take to draw, so I figured I’d share! This one took me around 20 hours, working just 2–3 hours a week whenever I had some free time in the evenings after work.
It went a bit faster than my last map because they already had their world mapped out in LegendKeeper, which gave me a great reference to work from and saved me quite a bit of time. When I make maps for my own worlds, the process usually takes a little longer because there’s a lot more brainstorming and workshopping involved. I have to figure out the shape of the land, where the mountains and rivers go, and how everything fits together.

Hope y’all like it!

After drawing for around an hour a day for a week straight, I finally finished! I tried making forests, plains, and mountains as accurate as possible.