1  Introduction

Drawing maps by hand has a long history. Today, we often rely on technology to create maps, but there are a number of reasons to work with good ol’ pencil and paper:

1. Understand an area in greater depth
2. Explore cartographic decisions before working with digital tools
3. Assess knowledge of an area, either by yourself or with a group
4. Create art
5. It’s fun!

Hand-drawn maps have applications as art, in designing board games, and illustrating manuscripts, just to name a few.

The maps we work on today in this workshop can be of your own design. They can represent a location that currently exists, or you could choose to represent a historical or future place, or one of your own imagination. Our goal is to practice a technique.

A hand drawn map of Harvard by Erwin Raisz - see more of his work at the Raisz Landform Maps website

1.1 Setting Our Intentions

The creative process tends to work better if we can turn off the critical, judgmental, and fearful parts of our brains. We will try to be patient with ourselves as we work and not worry about the outcome in the moment. We are learning and we will expect that things may not go as we plan, but we’ll be open to the possibilities that we create as we work. Essentially, everything you do is correct.