Map Drawing Tutorial 5: Islands

It's time to get stuck into some of the specific themes found in fantasy maps. This tutorial focuses on the high seas, and the islands that are frequently infested by pirates, natives and buried treasure.

This tutorial is very general, islands come in all shapes and size, often combining the geographical features described. If you want to draw convincing islands with natural looking coastlines, load up google maps or look at an atlas, take notice of how beaches tend to form in the concave contours, and how the convexes and peninsulas tend to form around rocky outcroppings.

Don't stick to rectangular forms, don't feel the need to fill every part of the page with mapped out detail.

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