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Ende: A 17th/18th Century Littoral Edger for Your Fantasy Maps

Ever since I put together my tutorial on replicating hatched 18th-century coastlines, I knew it was merely a stopgap. After all, the whole point of #NoBadMaps is to empower anyone to create high-quality historically-infused maps quickly and efficiently. While following along through complex Photoshop procedures can get you there, it still takes a bit more effort than I wanted.

All my Map Tools will always be free. Want to help support this work?
Click here to learn how.

Today, I’m proud to release the next iteration of the hatched coastline—Ende—a totally-free brush set where you can just paint-in your hatches. No longer do you have to go through multiple panels and several steps to get what you want. If you can draw a line, you can hatch in your littoral edges. Simple as that. Here’s a quick video showing how it works.

Ende is named after the first Spanish female manuscript illuminator and one of the first female cartographers. She lived around 1000 A.D.—her work is early enough that it doesn’t lend itself to a very robust brush set. Something I talked about in detail recently. But I liked the idea of naming a mapping tool after her.

Using Ende is simple. Install the brush set. Select the brush size you want from the Brush palette and paint it in. It is designed for Photoshop but should work in GIMP or Affinity. (No promises. I don’t use either tool.) It’ll work the best living on its own layer behind a solid landmass layer. You can also try using the “Wet” setting if you want the brush to have a more inky feel. You can toggle that on and off in the Brush Settings Panel (F5) in Photoshop.

The set itself includes ten brushes—1-pixel through 5-pixels with standard and wide variants of each. The wide variants double the white space between lines. You can see an example of each brush below. I recommend using a brush that closely matches the average thickness of lines and strokes on your project so it will look the most natural.

Left to Right: 1px to 5px, Wide variant on bottom row

That’s it! An easy-to-use littoral edger for your fantasy map projects. Just click the button below to download Ende and quickly edge in your coastlines.

download ende 1.0

As with all of my previous brush sets, Ende is free for any use. I distribute my sets with a Creative Common, No Rights Reserved License (CC0), which means you can freely use this and any of my brushes in commercial work and distribute adaptations. (Details on this decision here.) No attribution is required. Easy peasy!

Enjoy Ende? Feel free to show me what you created by sending me an email or finding me on Twitter or heck, leave a comment below. I adore seeing how these brushes get used, and I’d be happy to share your work with my readers (let me know in your message.) Let us see what you make!

Support this Work

Brushes and tools released through the #NoBadMaps project will always be free and released under a public domain CC0 license. If you’d like to support the project and help me cover the cost of hosting, research, and tool-set development, I’ve put together three ways you can help, and all are detailed below.

Buy My Books→

I’m not just a map enthusiast. I’m also a novelist! The easiest way to support me (and get something in return) is by purchasing one of my cosmic horror urban fantasy novels.

❦

Buy Me a Coffee→

A simple and quick way to support the #NoBadMaps project is through a one-time donation of any amount via ko-fi. Your support helps keep this project going and is appreciated.

❦

Join my Patreon→

If you want to continually support the #NoBadMaps project through a reoccurring monthly contribution, consider joining my Patreon and get sneak peeks into what’s coming.

❦

More Map Brushes

This is just one of many brush sets and map tools I’ve released. You can find it and other free brushes covering a wide variety of historical styles on my Fantasy Map Brushes page. Every set is free, distributed under a CC0 license, and open for personal or commercial use. I’m sure you’ll be able to find something that works for your project. Click the button below to check them out!

view more Fantasy Map Brushes

Want to stay in touch with me? Sign up for Dead Drop, my rare and elusive newsletter. Subscribers get news, previews, and notices on my books before anyone else delivered directly to their inbox. I work hard to make sure it’s not spammy and full of interesting and relevant information. Sign Up Today→

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My Fantasy Map Brushes Have a New Home

Quick update since I’ve been moving stuff around.

When I started #NoBadMaps and began releasing my brush sets, I didn’t expect them to explode in popularity the way they have. (My traffic has tripled in the last year.) As the project has expanded over the last few years, my Free Stuff page has become a bit overwhelmed. It was high time to move my brushes to their own location.

As of today, all my brush sets are now located on the new Fantasy Map Brushes page! I know a lot of sites have linked to my Free Stuff page, so I’ll keep a handy reminder there for a while. You can also access the page via the Free Stuff dropdown in the main navigation. Not much has changed visually or functionally, but I am starting to brainstorm a new way to layout the sets and make it a little easier to find the right brushes for your cartography project.

Continue to enjoy the brush sets! Please share what you create. Send me an email or find me on Twitter or heck, leave a comment below. I adore seeing how these brushes get used.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Homann: A Free 18th Century Cartography Brush Set for Fantasy Maps
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Homann: A Free 18th Century Cartography Brush Set for Fantasy Maps

I’ve been heads down working on the edits for Gleam Upon the Waves, so it’s been a while since I’ve shared any new resources for fantasy map enthusiasts, writers, cartographers, game masters, table-top role-playing game creators—whoever you are. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a few things up my sleeve. Today, I’m excited to announce the release of my latest free historically-based fantasy-map brush set, which I’ve named Homann.

All my Map Tools will always be free. Want to help support this work?
Click here to learn how.

Are you a fan of fields? Are defensive fortifications your jam? Then Homann is the perfect set for you. Based on L’Isle de Cadix du Detroit de Gibraltar, a 1788 map of the Strait of Gibraltar, by Johann Baptist Homann, a prolific German geographer, cartographer, and wig haver. (Yeah, click on his name. You’ll see what I mean.) It’s a unique map. One that seems to be at war with itself. It’s reminiscent of a battlefield map at first, but you can see how it’s mixed with the traditional cartography of its time. At the same time, it flirts with being a nautical chart, not something you often find on maps like this. But that jumbled confusion makes sense considering the messy military history surrounding the strait.

A unique map like this means the brush set extracted from it will be just as unique. The settlements are an unusual mix of pictorial illustrations and the traditional profile-style signs more common to cartographic maps of this era. Landforms are present but serve as a secondary backdrop to the strategic fortifications. Interestingly, a lot of effort went into detailing agriculture, and it’s not hard to see the amount of time the engraver spent on fields.

Since completing my Thirteen in Twelve project last year, I’ve been seeking out resources that separate themselves from the thousands of repetitive-looking maps from the 17th and 18th century. With all those quirks I thought Homann would stand apart while still working alongside any of my older sets, and I appreciate its attention to detail. It’s perfect for a wide variety of fantasy projects.

Homann is a medium-sized set of often VERY LARGE signs—some of the cartouches are over a thousand pixels wide—so, yeah… the detail here is fairly intense. With over 400 brushes, I’m sure you’ll find plenty of use in your work. The full set includes the following:

  • 13 Tents
  • 90 Houses
  • 7 Towns
  • 6 Elevated Towns
  • 2 Places of Worship
  • 20 Forts
  • 7 Unique Buildings
  • 45 Fields
  • 5 “Shoreline” Fields (These are less detailed than their cousins and were mostly found along waterways.)
  • 45 Trees
  • 100 Mountains
  • 14 Mountain Pairs (Basically, two mountains close together.)
  • 6 Mountain Ranges
  • 15 Anchorages
  • 2 Battle Markers
  • 5 Map Elements
  • 3 Ships (They’re big.)
  • 16 Sounding Marks
  • 30 Unit Positions/Markers

The button below links to a ZIP file that contains a Photoshop brush set (it’ll also work with GIMP and Affinity Photo) as well as a set of transparent PNGs in case you’re using a program that doesn’t support Adobe brush files. I’ve separated them by type: Settlements and Flora, Landforms, and Cartouches. They’re black and on a transparent background, so they’ll look broken if viewed in Chrome, but trust me, they’re all there.

download homann

As with all of my previous brush sets, Homann is free for any use. I distribute my sets with a Creative Common, No Rights Reserved License (CC0), which means you can freely use this and any of my brushes in commercial work and distribute adaptations. (Details on this decision here.) No attribution is required. Easy peasy!

Enjoy Homann? Feel free to show me what you created by sending me an email or finding me on Twitter or heck, leave a comment below. I adore seeing how these brushes get used, and I’d be happy to share your work with my readers (let me know in your message.) Let us see what you make!

🌍 Homann in Use

Want to see this brush set in use? I put together a sample map, and you can see the results below. There are three versions, a black and white version, one colored, and a decorated sample. Click on any of the images below to view them larger. Perhaps this will inspire you as you get started on your own projects!

An example of Homann in use (black and white)
3000x3000px
An example of Homann in use (color)
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An example of Homann in use (decorated)
1080x1080px

Support this Work

Brushes and tools released through the #NoBadMaps project will always be free and released under a public domain CC0 license. If you’d like to support the project and help me cover the cost of hosting, research, and tool-set development, I’ve put together three ways you can help, and all are detailed below.

Buy My Books→

I’m not just a map enthusiast. I’m also a novelist! The easiest way to support me (and get something in return) is by purchasing one of my cosmic horror urban fantasy novels.

❦

Buy Me a Coffee→

A simple and quick way to support the #NoBadMaps project is through a one-time donation of any amount via ko-fi. Your support helps keep this project going and is appreciated.

❦

Join my Patreon→

If you want to continually support the #NoBadMaps project through a reoccurring monthly contribution, consider joining my Patreon and get sneak peeks into what’s coming.

❦

More Map Brushes

This is just one of many brush sets and map tools I’ve released. You can find it and other free brushes covering a wide variety of historical styles on my Fantasy Map Brushes page. Every set is free, distributed under a CC0 license, and open for personal or commercial use. I’m sure you’ll be able to find something that works for your project. Click the button below to check them out!

view more Fantasy Map Brushes

Want to stay in touch with me? Sign up for Dead Drop, my rare and elusive newsletter. Subscribers get news, previews, and notices on my books before anyone else delivered directly to their inbox. I work hard to make sure it’s not spammy and full of interesting and relevant information. Sign Up Today→

Things Are A Bit Different Around Here
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Things are a bit different around here

Back in early October, I mentioned that a change was coming. If you’re a regular reader, by now you’ve probably noticed things look quite a bit different. While on vacation last week, I took some time to redesign the site and move some things around. Some of this was to prep for the coming of Gleam Upon the Waves, and some of it was to reduce the amount of time I dealt with random web stuff. So… what’s new? Let me tell you.

New Domain

Well, kinda. There was always a KMAlexander.com, but before it took you to a static page. Now it brings you here. I’ll touch a little more on this in a bit. Since the domain changed, it felt more appropriate to be a little more professional with the title. The form blog title “I Make Stories” is no more. (Don’t worry, I’m still making stories.)

Sub-Domains Are Gone… Mostly

My book sites used to be on separate webpages nestled under subdomains most of those are now gone and only a few remain. (store.kmalexander.com is one.) If you came from thestarswereright.kmalexander.com, chances are you’ll have landed here. This is part of the redirect process and I’m still trying to figure out a solution. But, those webpages still exist. All my books can now found up on the menu. Which brings me to the next part…

New Book Landing Pages

As I mentioned, in the before times, I had different sites for each book, and each of those had subsites. It was a lot to juggle. With this new site, all those have been merged here! You can find them up under the Bell Forging Cycle tab in the menu. They’re a bit cleaner and will look so much better for those folks using mobile devices. Moving to a more mobile-friendly approach was a big consideration for this redesign. You should check ’em out (share them with your friends.) I think they turned out great.

New About Section

I’ve streamlined all the stuff about me. The Appearances and Contact Info pages are now consolidated under the About section. Those pages will continue to get streamlined, but it made more sense to group them together than have them divergent. Also freed up more room in the menu and simplified things a lot more.

A New Home Page

This one is a bit odd. Since, if you come to kmalexander.com, you’ll land here, on the blog. That’s by design since this is the best place to get news and updates, and I’m not one of those authors who only post once a year. The homepage is currently a catch-all page, and it’s modeled after my old homepage. Still feeling this one out. It might eventually go away. I like the idea of the blog being front and center, but I can see an appeal for a homepage focused mostly on books. So, we’ll see how this goes.

New Sidebar & Footer

Juggled a few things around in the sidebar, and I’m still rearranging the footer. Search is now clearer, as is access to the archives. Overall, I think it’s a bit more streamlined. I’ve got plenty of working space, so don’t be surprised if I add some other stuff in that area as well.

So that’s some of the new changes you’ll find around here. Overall I think this is a solid step forward, and it’s nice not to have to fiddle with many different sites whenever I want to make simple changes. Also, being more mobile-friendly doesn’t hurt. What do you think? Leave a comment below and let me know.

Posted on

Change Is in the Air

I’ve had this blog since 2012, and for the extent of its life, it’s looked the same. Header, sidebar, posts, pages—everything has remained more or less unchanged for the last eight years and nearly nine-hundred posts. I love it, but sometimes we outgrow the things we love. It’s something I’m facing now.

As the title suggests, a change is coming. While the WordPress theme I started with (Twenty-Thirteen) has served me well, I’m starting to run into various walls. It’s old. Which means it’s not taking advantage of new technology. It’s not as responsive as I want, and the limited space really hinders me from doing some new things I’ve wanted to do.

So, over the next few weeks, expect to see some changes around here. Most of the changes you’ll see will be visual. But the functionality will remain largely unchanged. You’ll still be able to access all of the content, download my brushes, and read previous posts, but there’s a potential that some of the changes might mess with the format of some of my old posts and pages. So I apologize in advance if that happens, it’ll eventually get sorted out.

So, keep an eye out! Changes are coming and I think they’ll be good ones.

Jansson: A Free 17th Century Cartography Brush Set
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Janssonius: A Free 17th Century Cartography Brush Set for Fantasy Maps

If you’re like me, most-likely, you’re sheltering in place and doing your part to flatten the curve and keeping your loved ones, neighbors, and community healthy and safe. That comes with some downtime, and that downtime is the perfect moment to dabble in a cartography project! So, with that in mind, over the weekend, I put together another free brush set for you to use in your projects.

All my Map Tools will always be free. Want to help support this work?
Click here to learn how.

This is Janssonius, a topographical brush set with a nautical flair based on Johannes Janssonius’ 1650 nautical chart of the Bay of Bengal, and I could see it being excellent for a wide variety of projects.

Often historical cartographers would use symbols familiar to their viewers no matter where a map was set. Hills and mountains were rendered similar in appearance to those at home. Here, however, Janssonius incorporated local floral and landforms giving his chart a more tropical flair. It sets the symbols on these charts apart from his contemporaries like Joan Blaeu, and it adds a nice touch to the overall map.

I can’t wait to see what you create. Before now, I haven’t based a set on nautical charts. So this round, I made sure to incorporate a whole host of maritime symbols—rocks, sounding marks, shallows, and a whole bunch more. This will be handy if you’re telling a tale set on the high seas or just want to add a flash of authenticity to the coasts of your maps. The full set has 275 brushes and includes the following:

  • 5 Individual Tents
  • 7 Grouped Tents
  • 25 Towns
  • 10 Cities
  • 6 Forts [Note: These could be symbols for mills, but taking into consideration the nature of the map, I believe they’re most likely fortifications.]
  • 25 Trees
  • 25 Palm Trees
  • 10 Palm Tree Groups
  • 8 Forests
  • 6 Fields
  • 20 Hills
  • 30 Mountains
  • 10 Mountain Ranges
  • 3 Anchorages
  • 2 Shipwrecks
  • 20 Rocks
  • 4 Shallows with Rocks
  • 10 Small Shallows
  • 5 Shallow Textures
  • 30 Sounding Marks
  • 5 People Cartouches
  • 3 Map Cartouches
  • 6 Ship Cartouches

The button below links to a ZIP file that contains a Photoshop brush set (it’ll also work in GIMP and with Affinity Photo) as well as a set of transparent PNGs in case you’re using a program that doesn’t support Adobe brush files. I’ve separated them by type: Settlements, Flora, & Landforms, and Nautical Symbols & Cartouches. They’re black, and they’ll look broken if viewed in Chrome, but trust me, they’re all there.

DOWNLOAD JANSSONIUS

As with all of my previous brush sets, Janssonius is free for any use. I distribute my sets with a Creative Common, No Rights Reserved License (CC0), which means you can freely use this and any of my brushes in commercial work and distribute adaptations. (Details on this decision here.) No attribution is required. Easy peasy!

Enjoy Janssonius? Feel free to show me what you created by sending me an email or finding me on Twitter. I love seeing how these brushes get used, and I’d be happy to share your work with my readers. Let me see what you make!

🌏 Janssonius In Use

Want to see this brush set in use? I put together a sample map and you can see the results below. There are three versions, a black and white version, one colored, and a decorated sample. Click on any of the images below to view them larger. Perhaps this will inspire you as you get started on your own projects!

Support this Work

Brushes and tools released through the #NoBadMaps project will always be free and released under a public domain CC0 license. If you’d like to support the project and help me cover the cost of hosting, research, and tool-set development, I’ve put together three ways you can help, and all are detailed below.

Buy My Books→

I’m not just a map enthusiast. I’m also a novelist! The easiest way to support me (and get something in return) is by purchasing one of my cosmic horror urban fantasy novels.

❦

Buy Me a Coffee→

A simple and quick way to support the #NoBadMaps project is through a one-time donation of any amount via ko-fi. Your support helps keep this project going and is appreciated.

❦

Join my Patreon→

If you want to continually support the #NoBadMaps project through a reoccurring monthly contribution, consider joining my Patreon and get sneak peeks into what’s coming.

❦

More Map Brushes

This is just one of many brush sets and map tools I’ve released. You can find it and other free brushes covering a wide variety of historical styles on my Fantasy Map Brushes page. Every set is free, distributed under a CC0 license, and open for personal or commercial use. I’m sure you’ll be able to find something that works for your project. Click the button below to check them out!

view more Fantasy Map Brushes
Dead Drop: Missives from the desk of K. M. Alexander

Want to stay in touch with me? Sign up for Dead Drop, my rare and elusive newsletter. Subscribers get news, previews, and notices on my books before anyone else delivered directly to their inbox. I work hard to make sure it’s not spammy and full of interesting and relevant information.  SIGN UP TODAY →