Mapping Mordor: Cartography of The Hobbit

I know that technically Mordor is in the providence of The Lord of the Rings, but my earlier post on mapping Mirkwood follows the same title format.  So I stuck with it.

 

I’ve always wondered what produced the almost square mountain ranges that encompass most of Mordor; it’s a land that’s almost instantly recognizable on a map if you’re a fan of any fantasy whatsoever.  I haven’t yet read any of the massive history tomes that Tolkien wrote, I’ve only made it through the Lord of the Rings three or four times so far.  But it’s a great land to look at.

I know that in my cartography I’m not really breaking any new ground, but nonetheless I really like mapping out these places and seeing every little detail.  Mordor doesn’t have nearly as many as the Wilderland map I’ve done, but still… all those mountains.  Man.  I had fun with this one because I used watercolors to add some extra shading/color to the mountains; in plain ink they looked a bit boring.

Enough blabber! Here are the pictures:

 

I’m also working on a few sketches that involve Edward Gorey-esque children – I’m getting the occasional search on the blog for “Edward Gorey children”, so I thought it appropriate to do some art that’s relevant to that, so as not to disappoint searchers.

Mapping Mirkwood; Cartography of The Hobbit

I’ve been fascinated by fantasy maps for a long time.  As a voracious reader of many novels both science fiction and fantasy, you get used to see maps at the beginning of the novel in your hands.  Often these are big, elaborate affairs, where mountain ranges sprawl for hundreds of miles and towns with strange unpronounceable names dot the landscape.  Finding the locations mentioned in the novel is fun, but it can be even more exciting to read the names of locales that aren’t mentioned, and wonder what’s to be found in that particular town or strange forest.  ”Normal” fiction often doesn’t have these maps, and understandably so – it’s less necessary for the reader to have a map of Los Angeles than it is to include a map of Westeros.  Most people are well aware of where Los Angeles can be found in relation to the rest of the United States.  King’s Landing or Hobbiton might be a bit harder to relate to.

The past few days I’ve been working on the map from The Hobbit.   I loved it when I first discovered the book in middle school, and I still love it today.  It’s full of little details, and tells you exactly where Bilbo and Co. traveled in their adventure to the Lonely Mountain.  I’m working on transcribing the map from the paperback novel I’m borrowing from a friend onto a big piece of Bristol paper, measuring 9 inches by 12.  Doing so is giving me a chance to work on regular terrain features like forests and mountains, which are generally pretty abundant on fantasy worlds.  I’ve finished inking the forest of Mirkwood, and the next step is to do the Misty Mountains.  In today’s blog post, I’d like to share a progression of my work, starting with the Lonely Mountain and ending with the finished forest.

 

The finished forest.

Mouse Territories of the Northern Reaches

I recently did a map for an upcoming Mouse Guard campaign that I might be running soon, and so I had the idea to post a listing in my shop for custom fantasy maps done in the same style. For those who don’t know, Mouse Guard is a comic set in the middle ages, and it’s all about mice with swords protecting their territories from predators and so on. It’s written and illustrated by David Petersen.

The map I created is inspired by the map that Petersen drew for the Mouse Territories. The original is done on 11×14 Bristol paper, stained with coffee, and colored in using watercolor pencils for the water. The lines are all inked using brushes or a steel nib pen. I know that most maps these are created using Photoshop or some other illustration program on the computer, but I don’t have anything of the sort, so I get resourceful and make things by hand.
What does everyone think? Any advice or suggestions? Thanks for looking!