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There And Back Again. Dad’s Map as a path from digital to drawn and back to digital

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I’ve been into hand drawing maps lately, to give as gifts. What a blast. I’ve found that the process is pretty cyclical, though as I use a GIS to prep for a hand drawn map, and then later was inspired by the results to create texture resources for GIS so I could make hand drawn maps digitally. In any case, if you are interested in the nerdy, sentimental story, you can check out the two-parter here:

Pt 1: Digital to Hand
Pt 2: Hand to Digital

Here are some images of using a digital reference to create a hand drawn map…

ProRasterFunction

MacRefComplete

Detail

And here are some images where I use hand drawn texture resources to feed into a fully digital map…

ProPencilMap

Pencil stroke only:

1

Pencil with a pen stippling:

5

Pencil with watercolor:

2

Pencil, watercolor, and pen stippling all together:

4

Here are the texture images used for these maps. Take them. I implore you.

Hacky Mapping! John

11 thoughts on “There And Back Again. Dad’s Map as a path from digital to drawn and back to digital”

  1. John – Did you convert your raster data into polylines for your contours?

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    1. Hi Zand. Yes, In ArcGIS Pro, I used a tool called “Contours” to create a vector contour layer based from the digital elevation model image.

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      1. John thanks for the response! I should have been more specific with my questions. Did you use the Contours tool on the original DEM or “temporary” DEM the Raster Function Contour tool creates?

      2. I started with a DEM image. I applied the Countours tool available in Spatial Analyst to the DEM, creating a new, vector, contour layer.
        Actually, I don’t recall if I did that or if I just used the Raster Function to display contour bands. I’ve looked at too many contours and DEMs lately to know. Why do you ask?

      3. I’ve had this idea about making a map coloring book for people as a gift and I am looking at your stuff for inspiration. It would be similar to what you did on your hand drawn map but I would just print it out and have them color it.

  2. Love looking through these maps! The ability to be artistic while still delivering information is part of what drew me into the GIS world! I need to try more of the hand painted/drawn work myself!

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  3. Love these maps! “Stole” the textures and made a gift for my grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary of the homes they have lived in together. I wish I could attach a picture here…

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