The Art of Map Illustration: A Step-by-Step Artistic Exploration of Contemporary Cartography and Mapmaking by James Gulliver Hancock

The Art of Map Illustration: A Step-by-Step Artistic Exploration of Contemporary Cartography and Mapmaking Reviews

• 
  Julia

  This book surprised me in many ways. It has information on hand-drawn/illustrated maps and on digitally made maps. There are how-tos and a lot of information on which materials to use. What really grabbed my attention - and made me sharpen my pencils - were the wonderful pictures of artistic maps. I wanted to try it out myself. I might add some maps to my future travel diaries.
  
  I'm considering making this book a coffee table book, just because of the pictures.
• 
  Nostalgia Reader

  Maps that illustrate fantastic worlds or lean more towards the artistic side than the solely factual side have always fascinated me, and I hoped that I would gain some tips and tricks for working on my own fictional maps.
  
  This book mainly focuses on city/street maps and maps of actual places–not on creating your own fictional worlds via maps–which wasn’t what I was expecting. Each of the four author/illustrators use a different media approach–pencil and watercolor, Illustrator and Photoshop, and ink–to illustrate artistic renditions of cities, natural areas, childhood neighborhoods, and fact maps. It was fun to see how each illustrator detailed their process, from initial idea of what to map and what major landmarks to include, to the final project, all of which were art gallery worthy pieces!
  
  While I’m not really a fan of these types of maps that focus more on the hip places and culture of a city by using big illustrations of landmarks rather than on the actual navigation, seeing how other artists work is still an inspiration. I didn’t gain any tips that I could find myself applying to my own mapmaking at this point, but it was still an enlightening look at the process in general.
  
  Thank you to NetGalley For providing me with a free copy to review!
  
  (Cross posted on
  my blog.)
• 
  Faith

  This book is delightful. Each page is visually appealing as they introduce children to map making. Traditional supplies are covered, then the book is broken up into sections by various map makers. Each one shares their favorite mediums and offers hints and suggestions to inspire children to make their own maps. We see the artists share some of their own creations step by step, then conclude with the final product.
  
  I am creative in some ways, but drawing skipped my gene pool; my sisters gained that natural talent from my mother and grandmother. All the same, as Hennie Haworth opened her section, she shared how to draw a tree, and I thought, "Hey, I could do that!"
  
  One note, though -- while these artists share great suggestions and offer a lot of pictorial ideas, there is some expectation of previously established drawing ability, with this book just to guide you with how to focus that skill to create an engaging map scene (one more example from Haworth's section: she starts with a sketch of a building, then goes into helpful detail as to how she would overlap colors and use pencils and pens for additional texture, but she expects you to know how to draw and just gain insight into how to shade and detail your existing drawing).
  
  For children with digital resources, Hill uses his section to walk through the steps he takes in Photoshop and Illustrator to create his maps.
  
  Plus, this book makes a point that maps can include more than just streets -- one artist has a visual recipe and a pictorial heavy page on how to change a bike tire. Another drew her profile with intricate details on the various parts of her brain based on what they control (short-term memory, etc). They also remind children that it's fine to play with perspective and distance and shrink things closer together to keep the visual interest.
  
  Each section is engaging, with interesting details and helpful tips and closes with a gallery of that artist's work. This book would draw people to flip through it, and if I left it on our table with drawing supplies nearby, I have no doubt either of my girls would get pulled in and want to create a map of their own.
• 
  Cassandra

  This was such a creative and inspiring book! I wish I had read it before my trip to New York. I have always loved the idea of bringing a journal with you everywhere you go when traveling to a new city, so that you can jot down small things you've done, conversations you overheard, and interesting things you've seen. The idea of creating maps, of these locations, and adding in small drawing of buildings, attractions, parks, etc is immensely exciting to me. Personally, i'm not a very good drawer... but i could still see something like this being a life long keepsake. The book came with simple instructions, and great ideas. I couldn't get enough of it. I will be purchasing this for a more artistic friend of mine, who is going backpacking across Europe for her honeymoon.
  
  
  A huge thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I truly appreciate it!
• 
  Liz (Quirky Cat)

  I received a copy of The Art of Map Illustration in exchange for a fair and honest review.
  
  I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know much about mapmaking, but I was really curious and wanted to try and learn at least a little bit about the subject. The Art of Map Illustration is a perfect novel for getting your toes wet, so to speak.
  For being an introductory sort of book it was surprisingly comprehensive, pulling in artists using multiple methods and styles. Four artists are included, and each one focused on different elements, ways to render the artwork, and what they felt was most important.
  Hennie Haworth showed us some of his hand drawn maps and the techniques he used. He also covered the basics of map making (like what you’d see on a map besides the most obvious bits).
  Stuart Hill makes his maps digitally, and he gave us a pretty good understanding of what was involved for that process. He had a lot of fun examples that helped to show the difference in results for hand drawn versus digitally drawn.
  James Gulliver Hancock appeared to use more of a blend between digital and hand drawn. His work has a digitized look to it while not being quite as ‘clean’ as being fully digitally rendered. I actually really enjoyed the end results for his work in particular. He also had fun doing more unique works, like the solar system and things of that nature.
  And last there’s Sarah King. Her work is hand drawn, but she does things in a completely different way from Hennie Haworth. Her pieces had more details in the drawings – the lines almost becoming a texture in themselves.
  This was a really fun introduction for map making. I had failed to realize how much went into maps besides just the map itself, but this novel opened my eyes to that fact. I really enjoyed each artist’s unique style for creating their maps, and having a good example of different styles helped me to understand the major points they were trying to get across.
  
  For more reviews, check out
  Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks
• 
  Alicia

  You can find a lot of inspiration and tips from these 4 artists as they show you their process of mapmaking through real projects from their portfolios.
  
  Hennie Haworth shows you, step by step, how to start your illustration and the order in which you should add streets, greenery, buildings, etc. The art is fabulous and the explanations make it easy for you to achieve a similar style. Very useful for traditional artists. You can find tips on how to use and combine different media like water colors, colored pencils, markers, etc. (I'm in love with her style)
  
  Stuart Hills guides you throw the process of creating maps digitally, with a lot of tips and techniques like how he achieves a rough/ handmade feeling in his designs. Some tips are only useful if you use Photoshop and Illustrator but most of them can be achieved using other programs.
  
  James Gulliver Hancock shows you how he makes use of both, traditional and digital elements, to achieve organic yet modern illustrations. A lot of inspiration here for city maps as well as other types of informative illustrations (my favorite was the illustrated recipe).
  
  Sarah King shares the traditional skills she uses for map illustration. Unlike the previous artists, her work is mostly black and white and has a very unique style where words are stylized and gracefully blend with the rest of the illustration. A lot of tips for those using pen and ink and even a mixed media approach using markers on wood.
  
  This is not an "absolute beginners guide to cartography" or a project-based book, but it works for anyone who has a desire to express ideas through drawings or try cartography and wants to learn by watching how professionals tackle these type of projects, how cool is that?. *I read it from an eARC
• 
  Lauren

  *This book was recieved through a Goodreads giveaway.*
  
  This is a cute little intro book to mapmaking illustration. As both an artist and an avid map lover, I found the book to be enjoyable. Reading this book made my day.
  
  *Upon recieving this book I also suggested it for purchase from my local library and the potential purchase is currently under review.*
• 
  Michael Kott

  Not really what I was looking for. The title says mapmaking so why is there someone mapping a human brain? I was looking for something to make maps for books. This was a bunch of unusable stuff. More drawing pictures than maps. The only actual maps were of a few cities and then it was adding pictures of attractions to them. Not the kind of mapmaking I'm interested in. Waste of time and money.
• 
  Alicia Bayer

  This is an interesting book for a very narrow audience. I thought that I could use it in some way with my kids for homeschooling or for my own art in some way, but it is just for drawing a certain type of map in a certain type of style. If you need to draw a map for some sort of handout, place mat, ad campaign, etc. and are good at art, then this might be just what you need. Sadly, even if I wanted to become a map maker and could think up a good use, it didn't give me the skills or tips needed to be successful at it.
  
  I received a temporary digital ARC of this book.
• 
  Darrel

  An engaging - even exhilarating at times - instructional book on creating map illustrations. Even though I had only a mildly curious interest in cartography, I was quickly caught up by the step-by-step breakdown of techniques and how-to explanations. Once I'd gotten started I found it difficult to stop reading my way through the book, often pausing and retrieving a book from my shelves featuring the type of map being discussed and observing and comparing the examples within. (Not to mention fetching pens, colored pencils, paper, etc.)
  
  Although the authorship of The Art of Map Illustration is attributed to James Gulliver Hancock, there are actually four individual artists featured within the pages. The book is broken down into four sections, each titled 'Artist Gallery', and the section is both written & illustrated by one of these artists. Each Artist Gallery is essentially a tutorial spotlighting a medium employed in the illustration of maps. The tutorials mainly concern mixed media art projects, but there is also an Artist Gallery devoted to using digital media and it does utilize some specialized software in this lesson. However, it isn't necessary to have the same software because you can likely just as easily apply the techniques you'll learn here with the software already available on most home PCs.
  
  The illustrated map examples presented within by the artists are both alternately and simultaneously, attractive, captivating and beguiling - and always inspiring. Their instructions are equally amiable and easy to follow. You'll soon be looking around you for the materials needed and proceeding along. This book is not an instructional formula on technical drawing so you won't have a need to feel compelled to follow along strictly. But do please start from the beginning and as you progress through and participate, go with your feel when your fancy strikes.
• 
  Andreea

  I was sent a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
  
  This is a really nice and quite surprising book on map illustration. It focuses a lot on personal map illustrations, rather than academic cartography which is really great and a new way to use your creativity - I never thought of drawing my own map, of my own neighbourhood or hometown or places dear to my heart.
  
  Presenting mapmaking from different artists' point of view you get a sense of the many styles one can use to create your own map. It was really interesting and it had a lot of helpful tips on channeling personal memories to create the best map. Also appreciated having one artist that was working mostly digitally and presenting Photoshop and Illustrator for mapmaking.
  
  However, I still think the book is counting a lot on the reader being skilled when it comes to drawing, and it also feels repetitive - even though the artists offer different styles, their ideas and concepts are quite similar and this could've been presented without repeating the concepts so much.
• 
  Nicki Markus

  The Art of Map Illustration is a colourful, interesting read. However, it was not entirely what I'd expected. It focused strongly on cities and real places, whereas I had anticipated at least one chapter looking at creating fantasy maps and works of pure imagination. That said, for those interested in modern cartography that incorporates cartoon-style imagery, this is a useful text, particularly since it outlines techniques for both traditional and digital map making. It is a vibrant, nicely presented book. I only wish it had been a little broader in its scope. As such, I would give it 3.5 stars. This is probably not a book that will interest fantasy writers wishing to create maps for their worlds, but it will be pertinent for people such as travel bloggers, who may like to include quirky maps in their posts to illustrate their trips, or journal enthusiasts, who include artwork in their BuJo to commemorate a trip.
  
  I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley.
• 
  Elizabeth

  I love maps. All kinds of maps. New ones, old ones...any kind. And I like to MAKE maps by hand, though I'm not particularly good at it.
  
  So when I saw this book was coming out, I preordered it based on the subtitle and description, which sort of implied that this was more about cartography and mapmaking by hand.
  
  For what it is, it's a beautiful book, and I learned quite a bit about illustrator/photoshop techniques. However, the handmade aspect of the thing is pretty thin. If you're not working with one of those two Adobe programs, you may not get a whole lot out of the book, in fact. There's a little bit on hand lettering from the artist at the end, but even the bits about hand-drawing the points of interest end up with those drawings being scanned and manipulated digitally.
  
  I still love the book, and it has a place on my shelves, but I do think its name is misleading, as is the description.
• 
  Emily Moore

  This is a phenomenal resource for intermediate to advanced artists and designers who are looking to work on a map project. This is a compilation of 4 different approaches to map-making based off 4 different artists' work. Some sections are more hand-drawn while others require the use of photoshop on the computer. Some artists take a very top line approach to their instructions encouraging you to see what works best for you while others offer very detailed step-by-step instructions on how to get the same effects they did.
  
  Overall the one unifying piece of this book is that these maps are by no means literal representations of cities. If you're looking for some ideas and tutorials on how to create a fun, playful and visually striking map then this would be perfect for you. You're bound to find one of these artists a source of inspiration.
  
  I’m providing this review in return for an ARC through NetGalley.
  
• 
  Ken

  Four artists share their techniques for mapmaking as well as samples of their work in The Art of Map Illustration. The book is full of beautiful illustrations by each of the artists, who employ a variety of media including pen, ink, watercolor and digital.
  
  There are a number of map-making tips spread throughout the book, but it seems more time is spent describing how to illustrate map embellishments such as trees and buildings. Each of the artists share an almost whimsical style (as seen on the cover) with cartoonish illustrations and that probably accounts for the number of pages devoted to creating and placing those decorative details.
  
  If the style suits you, the The Art of Map Illustration (Quarto Publishing Group, digital galley) is full of samples and would be a good book to reference for inspiration. Although the artists use a variety of media, the book feels a little repetitive because of the similar illustration styles.
  
  
• 
  Deirdre

  I wanted to like this book more than I did. I was excited to see it on the shelf at the library because I am interested in map making. I liked how it started from the beginning with materials that you could use and it had portfolios by four different artists. I also liked how the artist showed how they created the Maps either digitally or with conventional drawing materials. However I found many of the maps and illustrations either too busy or too simple. Perhaps I was more interested in traditional cartography and map making part than the illustration part. I hope this book stretches my brain up some. I’d give it a 3 1/2 if I could figure out how to do that
• 
  Emesskay

  I got this book because I have a kid who is really interested in maps, and I thought this book would show different style of map drawing. I was disappointed because it was really one style - those kinds of illustrated maps one usually picks up as a souvenir when on vacation.
  
  The book does show these types of maps from different artists, and discusses what software you can use to create these kinds of maps.
  
  So if you are into that thing, it would be a good resource, but if you were hoping to learn how to draw regular kinds of maps, this is not the book for you.
  
  
• 
  Jocelyn

  I received a DIGITAL Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
  
  This book was a feast for the eyes! It is always interesting to give a number of artists the same topic and see how they each interpret it. I very much enjoyed the step by step instructions that were given when working with different media, but also that they were not judgmental and offered a number of variations. Definitely a worthwhile read.
• 
  Scott Andrews

  Not 100% sold on this one, but there are some good ideas.
  
  I do like Stuart Hill's work.
  
  Sarah King is out there, but somewhat enjoyable. I imagine a lot of people would like her approach.
  
  Overall, not exactly what I expected. A little too "now" and cutesy. But, again, I think a lot of people would enjoy this as a jumping off point for their own work.
• 
  James

  It covers a couple of map styles that are like the ads you would see in the local fishwrapper or tourist guides and even those examples are a light gloss. Its not a cartography book in any useful sense and as a hardcore map nerd, I'm a bit disappointed.
• 
  زاهي رستم

  كتاب جيد عن رسم الخرائط بشكل فني.. والجميل أنه يلم بطريقة الرسم التقليدية والرسم الديجتال... ويحوي طرائق أربعة رسامين مختلفين... ساعدني في تطوير مفهومي حول رسم هذا النوع من الخرائط...
• 
  Erin

  Four artists and illustrators give tips and tricks for making quirky, charming hand-drawn maps, using traditional media and technology.
• 
  Carol Tilley

  Inspiring and fun.
• 
  kerrycat

  this caught my eye for drawing inspiration, of which there was plenty
• 
  Jo

  Inspirational and creative. This books shows you how to create smart and interactive maps. The tutorials are helpful with easy illustrated instructions and interesting sources.
• 
  Illustrious Illusions

  Easy to follow and well illustrated.
  
  A lot of good tips to making a fun and informative map while still being easy to follow and not so detailed that it becomes complicated.
• 
  Natalia

  This book highlights four well known map-making artists. Learn about their techniques using different media, including pen and ink, watercolor, mixed media and digital tools. The maps are beautiful and unique, and while I love all things cartography, I was looking for a bit more about map-making in general, and perhaps more than work from 4 artists. I think an artist or graphic designer currently working with maps would appreciate this book very much.
  
  Thank you Netgalley and Walter Foster Publishing for a copy of this book in exchange for a review.
• 
  Lisabeth

  Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher. and the author for allowing me to read and review a digital copy of this book. I learned so much about the art of map making. Such gorgeous pictures and illustrations. I learned a lot about art.