An Interview: Aaron Ross

I found a cartographer who has a passion for using his dreams to create wonderful hand drawn maps. He was awesome enough to share a few words of wisdom and share his art.

• What excites you about map making?

The fact that through it I can visualize the worlds of my dreams. It's also a really nice way of calming down a little bit.

I first drew maps when I was maybe 5 years old. At that time the forests were just scribbles and the mountains where simple triangles with an open bottom. My towns also always had the same names for lack of better ideas. I did that for a few years before school took over at which point it kinda stopped. Recently, I got into critical role and d&d and watched a couple videos about the topic.

When I came across wasd20, I also watched a few of his map making tutorials and immediately decided to try it out again. This first real experiment turned out to be the first world for some rpg games I ran. By now, I have drawn various maps in a variety of styles (some for other people as well). I also do some rpg battlemaps now (with a 1" grid) to use for my games.

• What tips you would give anyone making maps?

Start small and experiment a lot with different styles. When drawing a map, I always start with a very rough pencil outline of the landmass and marking areas where I want to have mountains. I then go over the coast again and detail it a little more. At this stage I also put in rivers and lakes if needed. Then I put in towns and important locations as well as names. Next step is to outline the coast, the rivers, the locations and names using a pen. The final step is to draw the icons for mountains, hills and forest (or whatever is to appear on the map).

Now, this can of course change from one map to the other but it's basically my process. A final tip I can give is: Draw by hand. Even though some say digital is best I still think that the hand drawn map feels far nicer. You can always go into photoshop (or else) later to both touch up and color/weather your map.

• Where do you post your cartography?

Well, most of the time I upload the maps to my facebook page as well as in some groups, some have also found their way to my instagram page (@aarom_m_ross) or on my blog www.bloodofscyllus.wordpress.com , but either of these is not specifically for map making but more for all things that kinda interest me.

This is a recent experiment with stylefile markers (alcohol based).
I did a full map of a village (~a4 size) in a similar style.