When it comes to art I feel like shading is one of those magical things. There’s just something about transforming a drawing on a flat piece of paper, to something that feels like it’s popping off the page. Just about every aspiring artist and cartographer I know wants to learn how to shade, but it also feels like one of the most intimidating things to learn. While there is certainly room for complexity, I think you can easily achieve more than satisfactory results with just some basic principles. Those simple principles are what I hope to equip you with today, so you can master value and can adding shading to your fantasy maps with ease.

Adding shading to your fantasy map brings a whole new level of depth and texture that can help your readers or players visualize the landscape you've created. But if you don’t consider yourself an “artist”, then the idea of shading might feel very overwhelming. Between what colors to use, light direction, and form, it can be difficult to know where to begin.

Do you want to add an epic fantasy border to your map, but you don’t know where to begin? Or perhaps you do know, and that’s the problem because you know how long it takes to do one by hand. This is why I added a new border brush in the latest update of The Fantasy Map Builder, to make the process of putting the finishing touches of your map that much easier!

If you really want a classic hand-inked look for your fantasy map, then adding hatching lines along the coastlines is a great way to do it. Unfortunately, it is very time-consuming to draw each individual line, and keeping them equally spaced can cause no shortage of frustration. But now with the Ocean Hatching Brush included in the Map Effects Fantasy Map Builder, you can instantly add hand-drawn hatching lines with just a click.