Click on the picture above to get to the full resolution picture that can be used (for non-commercial use) as a desktop background or for a personal mapping project.
A few weeks back I made a hand drawn map of Europe for a short movie of my travels over the last years. Now I want to write a little about how I made this map. I happened to already have a world borders dataset that I found here. So using the software that came with my printer I printed out a map of Europe from ArcGIS on 9 (3×3) sheets of paper and taped that together before pinning it to the corkboard. I then put a thick white cardboard over it and taped that to the paper below so they would not move. Then using a small light table (seen above the drawing on the second picture) I shined light through both layers and drew one country at a time, first by pencil and then with a black pen. I had to simplify the borders a when drawing, but in my opinion that gives the map more of a handmade quality. The finished drawn and coloured map can be seen above, and I have done a few corrections to the picture in Photoshop to make it look as good as possible.
Here are a few pictures of the process of making this map, clicking on them will open up a gallery. The video I made was in widescreen/16×9 ratio so that’s why two of the images below are in that format.
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- The printed map
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- The setup for the drawing and photographing for the movie
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- The light table below the print and the cardboard
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- The first few countries I drew.
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- The finsihed drawn map before colouring.