How to Draw a Map

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Laura Pace, I'm here at Asel Art Supply Today, and I'm going to show you how to draw a map today. This is a map that I just made up, I had a lot of fun with it, it's an imaginary map. But the first thing I want to tell you about a map is, usually they're drawing from a plane view, that is overhead, as if you're up in the sky looking down at Skull Island. Another thing to remember about a map is, since you're drawing a diagram that people are going to use to determine directions, you want to have a north arrow on the map. And conventionally on most maps the north arrow is pointing towards the top of the page. Another useful thing you want on your map is some idea of the scale or distance you're depicting. So right down here I depicted that two inches equal one mile on this little island. I drew this map with some technical pens that come in different line widths, and those are really useful because on a map you're probably going to want to have at least three different line weights, maybe four, to note different types of boarders. I used my heaviest line on the outside of Skull Island with my thickest pen, and then I drew lighter lines like the boarders of the quick sand area with a medium weight pen. And I used my lightest weight pen to draw in little details like ripples on the water, this little mountain range in here. And now that brings up another thing, when you're drawing a landmark on a map you might want to make it more a 3D view instead of an overhead view, so the person who's using the map can really see what you're showing there. That's what I did with these mountains, the Cranial Mountains on my map, is I showed them from the side so they really look more mountain like, instead of just abstract shapes. Another thing I did here is I used different sizes of print to note which titles are the most important titles. So I made the name of my map the name of the island, the biggest print right here, Skull Island. The second most important or biggest feature, Sea of Barataria, I made a little bit smaller and I made it caps and lower case. And where you work all the way down to something like a small landmark like the Jaw River right here, I use pretty small type. So that's what I have to tell you today about how to draw a map. Try it yourself."