"Ayar" by Heather Lauren Medley

There are a lot of things about this map that I do not like. But, none of those are the reason that I bother posting any comments.

It's a great map, in spite of its flaws, because of it's mountains. The mountains are most wonderful, a fine example of exaggerated terrain, compared to the other terrain features.

You do a great job of drawing mountains, even if they seem to have a similarity in the peak-work. You have the potential to craft maps that are masterpieces. You truly do.

Heather Lauren Medley replies: "if there are things you do not like about the map, as long as they are not just immiture petty "this pic sucks!" kind of comment like you find a lot on EW , please feel free to leave them - this was actually the first attempt at a full-out finished map, and only my 2nd attempt of drawing a map at all, and am always looking for constructive critizism, especially being the only finished piece i've done of landscape"

Double underlining several of the place location names added nothing to this particular map.

Your forests are a mixed bag. They have a little detail, but not a lot. The green color for them is fine, and adds t the map, but the way that you applied it makes your forests look sloppy. Also, apparently, no small groves of trees exist in this land. That makes the map much less interesting. Small features are no less relevant to a map of this nature than the major geographic features. A lonely mountain here or there, or a few small forests to compliment the grand forests of the realm, can benefit a map tremendously, as they all add up to greater collective detail and aesthetic appeal for a map. You don't have to cram every inch of a map with features, to add a few smaller geographic standouts here and there.

The small mountains directly to the west of The Dark Sea look more like hills, than mountains. That's more how like you should make your hills look on various places on the map.

I hope that these comments prove helpful to you.

Heather Lauren Medley replies: "indeed they will - a large majority of what you pointed out were all things that i had issues with too, once I had finished, so indeed it does help out alot as it's reassurance that it's not just me, those areas do need work on, and i greatly appreciate your comment. I think a big problem with the picture is that I had originally drew it on a rather small scale, so it was hard to put in everything that may need to be there, but I did have plans on re-doing this piece on a larger scale and I will definately use your comments, and i'm sure they will be quite helpful - and once again, i greatly appreciate your help, in fact this is one of the very few, if not only actual cunstructive critisim I've recieved on ET, so it is cherished even morethankyou so much "

The waves representing water, near the coastlines, is a plus, though the coasts could have benefited from more detail and variation.

The oceans/seas surrounding the continental sized landmass constitute a large portion of the map, and yet, there are no ships nor sea monsters or whirlpools nor other things of interest to draw the eye and to capture its gaze for any notable length of time. This is a prime example of missed opportunities in fantasy/fictional cartography. The seas are yours for the making, and yet you chose to do virtually nothing with them. Tsk, tsk, tsk. How very disappointing and disenchanting. You should want the map to enchant the one observing and studying it, not disenchant them. The real question to ask yourself is, what is it about a given section of a map that enchants the person looking at it.

The sun in the compass isn't bad looking, but it is plain looking, as far as its facial features are concerned. What a pity. It adds to the map, but it could have added so much more.

Having rivers on the map adds to its appeal, but very little time was apparently spend on fleshing out the rivers and detailing them or their coastlines. Rivers are traditionally lifelines of a realm, and yet the growth of forests seems to pay little heed to where your rivers flow on this map. The rivers also all appear to be the same width. If you did your mountains the same way that you did your rivers, then this map would be a hollow shell of its current self. Your mountains look semi-glorious, whereas your rivers are "just there."

Your use of islands is a plus on this map. However, once you drew them, you didn't imbue them with any terrain features of note. Some exaggerated, detailed mountains on them would have improved these islands considerably.As it is, these islands just sort of sit there, places on a map to be sure, but rather boring and uninteresting to look at.

On the main continent as well as on the various larger islands, you did a good job on the edges of these various landmasses.They are not real smooth and straight, and it imbues them with a more realistic and natural feel.

The various small text place location names are hard to read, in numerous instances. That translates into the map losing part of what should be its inherent appeal. How can a map suck the one studying it into the realm of imagination, if one has a hard time making out what the map even says? It might as well be called the Land of Gibberish, whenever your place location names become illegible and unintelligible. This would be forgivable, if it was a world or land populated by space aliens, or if it was an intentional effect, such as if each race or kingdom on the map had its own language, in a quasi-Tolkienesque manner. However, on this map, the names of the places appears to have been intended to be done in plain English - I just can't make them all out, when trying to read and study the map.

The hills directly above the Purewater Fields stand in sharp contrast to the fine looking mountains just below the Fields of Glamar.

None of the population center icons look good. You should imbue each population center with detail, so thereby each one gains some sense of architectural flavor of its own. They don't have to be any larger in size, just to be imbued with more detail.

The Great Watchtowers of the East and South are also examples of using exaggeration when drawing features on a map. However, unlike the mountains on this map, the Great Watchtowers are nearly devoid of detail. They resemble those old timey brooms made of field straw. These Great Watchtowers draw the human eye, also, because of the use of exaggeration incorporated into them, but the detail of the mountains continually draw the human eye back, again and again, as one studies this map. Using greater detail, as well as imbuing each individual Great Watchtower with its own architectural uniqueness, would have had a much greater positive and visual impact.

Your use of color on this map, where the different colored text for various location names and population center icons are concerned, do far more to detract and disenchant this map than probably anything else. The large lettering, aside from being hard to read, reminds me of a small child using oversized markers or crayons. If you had done nothing else other than use black ink in the place of those large text entries, the map would be more vivid and more legible. As it stands now, it almost destroys the aesthetic value of the overall work.

you.

Very well, here are some additional comments on this map.

The mountains remain my favorite thing about this map. Why? One, because they are more detailed than many of the other features displayed on this map, be they natural or cities. And two, because they incorporate an element of exaggeration in the drawing style used for them. On maps of this nature, the element of exaggeration draw the human eye to it.