For a novel set in a fictional land with a geography lightly related to Europe’s, I started with an author sketch, and fleshed it out into a more detailed pencil sketch that incorporated elements the author communicated to me.

For the actual drawing, I had a few false starts drawing with a pen on vellum, and then switched to drawing on a tablet… I just don’t have the lifetime skills to taper pen lines the way you need to make a map look convincingly like an engraving. I applied light coloring to make it look a little like a watercolor-tinted map, and added some aging effects, but that’s basically how we ended up.