Drawing Maps and Diagrams

1. Intro: Hey guys, my name is Rona McCain and I teach everything drawing and creativity. In this class, we're going to be learning how to draw two kinds of maps. The first one is a top down Google maps form and the second one is a little bit more detailed, sort of a diagram style. You only really need pencil and paper and eraser for this class. However, the supplies I will be using is a fountain pen that has waterproof black ink in it, the Madori sketchbook and a small art toolkit dried watercolor palette. Show you a bunch of examples so you can get inspired, and then we can draw and color both types of maps together. Get ready to learn some maps. I can't wait to get started. 2. Inspiration: There are two kinds of maps that I'll be showing you today. The main one that I do is that off. Ones like this. They're line maps. It's like if you looked on Google and found a map of something, a top down version of what you're seeing. In this, you can use little icons to show different places or you can draw what it would look like looking down on it. That's the one. The other one is what this is, but I'll show you a better example. So this is the second one, although it doesn't quite look like a map, it's more of a diagram. So here I have a number one, and this shows this area, and two shows this area. That's at more front on map with a little bit more detail. I'll just show you some more examples of maps. Other ones I've done, I usually use it for nature journaling or for urban sketching. Here's the nature journaling one. This is a bit more of a diagram one where I'm showing two trees and the path that the bird I saw was taking. Also over here, this is also a path that the bird was taking around the tree. This was a crow outside my place. This was the door to my house. Um, coming outside, this was my car. That's the fence. So it's very much a top down version with pathways going to different areas for where the crow was, where I was, the crow path, my path, and birds. This was another diagram one where I'm showing where the bird went to collect little bugs or different things. I was trying to figure out what they were eating. Here's another diagram one where I'm showing the path that this chipmunk took or squirrel? Maybe it's a squirrel. Down the path, and this was all the different poses. Okay. This one, this whole area is where I went to and I just took this from a Google map. But I only drew in here where the actual path that I took was the basic path, and then I put where I traveled with my colored pencil. This is another one of those diagrams. Here's the tree, here's some arrows. A bird came in, swooped down on the other bird. Very exciting. This is a top down one, and this was me at a park and I saw a bunch of birds. You'll notice the theme and a lot of birds, especially in this sketchbook. This was when I was doing a nature journaling class. We went outside and we collected a couple of leaves. I just drew a map to show where I collected those items from. This is a top down one of this cute little creek by my parents' house. I just wanted to show where everything was, put little arrows and put what trees were there, and this is the water. And then here I went to a cute little Park, and this was the top down of the path, and these were all these bushes that I was looking at to find these items. So another top down shot. I went to a park with my dad, went birding, and so I just showed what the path was and then put in little numbers for the key to show where we saw different things. And I think that's it. So let's get on to making some icons for our maps. 3. Supplies: All right, so here are my supplies that I use. All you really need is a pencil and paper, maybe a sketchbook, eraser. But there are other options and I'll just show you what I use in case that helps inspire you. This is just a little case I got that perfectly fits my sketchbook. So that's there. This is a Midori sketchbook. Yeah. The paper in it is super smooth. I love it because I can use fountain pens in here and I can use watercolor in here and it's just the best paper I've found that works for everything. Plus, it's pretty thin, so you don't have to worry about having a sketchbook with super bulky paper, which I do not like. Then I have this little sock, part of a sock. Pretty dirty, but that's right. I use that because when I use my little palette for watercolor, here we go. When I use my brush pen or my water brush pen, the water is just inside here and when I'm done using a color, I just push out that color and wipe it off on my sock. That's pretty awesome. Super easy. I don't have to worry about taking water with me. Then I also have my fude pen. This is a fountain pen that uses waterproof black ink. That's really cool because the marks that you make with this can vary in their sizes. That's really cool. I also have just a tiny little eraser and some paintbrushes, but also a mechanical pencil. That's basically what I use. It all fits in my nice little kit. Like this, in here, I have both watercolor and gouache, but I just water the guash down so that it is transparent enough that I can use it basically like watercolor. 4. Icons: So good thing to do before you get right into your map is just do some icons for different items that you would see in your typical maps. Most of mine have to do with nature, so I have trees, shrubs, paths, buildings, water, grass, benches, things that I'd come across quite often. Then I'm just going to look around and find different ideas for how to draw these things in simple ways. Because especially when we were breaking this down into a very simple map, we don't actually want to draw too much detail unless we're doing maybe a diagram map, but even then I would simplify. So these are more thinking about those top down maps that I showed you. So for trees, I'm going to put in as many ideas as I can think of that I would potentially use in a map. Now, you don't have to use all of these. This is just more ideas. And what you can do as you follow along is I'll do a bunch of versions, and you can pause it and you can try them out yourself. So feel free to do any other item that you think you would find in your map for trees. Let's see. Here's a super simple one. If I'm doing a map and I want a whole area filled with trees, I could just do something like this. To show trees. Now, this does look a little bit like mountains, so that might be good to see. So maybe I do another version that looks like that. So then I could do one like this, one like that. One like that. So those are all versions of trees. I could go a little more detailed, as well. There you go. For shrubs. I could do just kind of like a fluffy ball. Could do one with a few bits, but a flat bottom. I could even just do circles if I wanted to get really simple with it. For paths, sometimes I'll just use a straight line, like I showed in one of my other maps before, but you can also use ones that are thicker. You could have ones that are more of a road have those little dots inside. Could also do it like a pathway. It's a little more bumpy for buildings. Now, this one we can get very specific with the building, or you can use more of an iconic idea. Say we passed by a library and we wanted to put that library in. I could draw something that looks more like a building, it's got some windows, something like that. Or I could do a picture of a book to represent that building. There you go. There's a little book. If I had a map and say there was a path coming down and came this way and here was the library. That would just show and I could do a little arrow that says library, or I could have a key to the side or number, something like that for water. That could include streams or lakes or ponds. I might do something like that for a pond, maybe the edge with some water texture inside for a lake for a stream, We might just put the path and then add little stream bits inside. This is where color is really going to help us because right now this could be a path. This could be a road, we don't totally know, but once we put some blue in there, it's definitely going to look like a stream. You could also just have a line but have that line be blue. For grass. Do a few ticks. If I have a large area that has grass and I have some of that on it, then I know that's for grass. Could do something like that. If I wanted just to encompass that area, this whole area is grass. Maybe they're long grass, something like that, like sweeping grass. Now we have benches. When I do top down, I like to do a bench. Something like that or Something like that. Can also add a couple lines inside to show the wood. If I wanted to get a little bit more detailed with it, I could do more of a three quarter look. Something like that. So that's getting more detailed, but still isn't too complicated. So there you go. So take a moment and make sure that you have all the icons that you want to practice. For buildings, you can just look up things places you've been, places that you want to go, and then come up with a bunch of buildings. So I'll just add a couple more here just to make sure we covered that. Maybe it's a fast food place. A burger or a castle. So look around on Pintres, find ideas from different maps. There you go. 5. Draw a map: Let's draw a map. I'm looking at a map of a place called Coopville where the fairy is. So the other I don't know, maybe a month ago, I went to Port Townsend, and we took the CoopvilleFary. However, while I was there, I saw a ton of new birds, so it was really exciting. I'm going to look at this map and kind of decide what I want to do with it. Do I want to use icons? Do I want to show thick paths or thin paths? So I'm going to use this Google Map pretty closely for this one because it's a top down. I'm going to make the roads thicker and then maybe the parking lot area thinner. So let's see if I do. This is the road. Coming down. I'm just going to go straight and pen. You can definitely use pencil first. But this seems recent decently simple enough that I can just go into it. And I don't need it to be kind of perfect. This kind of comes down into where the ferry goes off, and then comes down this way. It connects this goes off to a road. This way. Now, let's add in all those land bits. So this comes this way. And then the other side, I got it coming down and kind of goes off that way. Then the back side, we have kind of this shape. So where are they important parts? I'm going to add in this part kind of coming straight down here. And again, I don't I don't need this to look perfect. Mostly I just want to show where I went, where the different birds were, that sort of thing. So this I'm going to just write. This churn and I can write fairy. So that was just where the ferry went off too. And then the parking lot area. This is kind of where we lined up. I was adding kind of this road. And then over here was kind of the marsh area where we went and I saw a marsh wren, and I saw, just a whole bunch of gray birds. So I'm going to put maybe a one over here because that's the first spot that I saw birds. And then also I saw, let's see, two, a different bird here. And then over here, there was a third one. And then down here, I saw a fourth. I'm going to make a key with this to make sure I get all those areas in, but I'm also going to put a little square for my car. So for my car, I could do something like this, a square like that, or I could do something like that, just to represent where the car went. In this one, I think I'll do a simple one just because I don't have a lot of space for those cars. I think I think the car was around here. Then I'll just put a little note that says our car. Yeah. Then I'm just going to write marsh here because that was the marshlands. Car parking. So the main thing I saw there was the shred. Just gone ahead and written in the different birds I've seen. I had to look them up. So I saw the marsh wren at one, the common mirror at two, Harlequin duck at three, and then a whole bunch of cormorants at four. And these are all new birds to me. So that's why I kind of took notes. So I can put a little bit of, like, I think this is a restaurant. So maybe I'll do do a fork and a knife to show that's the restaurant. And this is called Kalin so I'll put that over here. There we go. So I don't have to add that, but we did go to the bathroom there, so it's kind of I kind of took note of it. So I can put little like ticks grass. Yeah, there are some trees over here, so I think I will do some trees like that to show that. Yeah, and there we go. So there is our map when I went to Coopville. 6. Tree drawing: The next map I'm going to do is more of a diagram map. So right outside my house, I have a tree, and there has been some crows the last few days kind of making a nest in there. So I think I'm going to draw out a basic drawing of that tree and then kind of the path that the crows take to come in and out and then also where that nest is. I see a lot of green kind of surrounding the tree. And so it's a little bit hard to see inside, but I'm gonna pretend like that's not there, and I'm just going to add most of that with my watercolor. I'm just going to look at that now and see that there is kind of a branch coming in here. And then that kind of goes back. Then there's another part of the tree kind of coming up this way. There's a lot coming out there. I'm just going to kind of cut this tree off just to show that that comes forward. I can't really see that. And then there's lots of branches kind coming out. I'm not going to worry about being too specific with this because there is a lot of branches. So I just want to get the idea. This kind of comes down this way. Then there's another branch kind of comes out. Yeah. But the main area I want to look at is that the nest is kind of right in there. So I'm just gonna draw that in. I don't actually know what it looks like because there's a lot of things covering it, but I'm just going to make a nest. There, let's add some texture to the tree. Nothing too crazy, but just to show that it is a tree. So I can either write right beside this crow's nest or I could make a key. So because I did a key in the last one, I think for this one, I'm just gonna do an arrow. And I'll put one beside it so that I can add stuff to the side afterwards and just add whatever I like. So I'm gonna add more branches now. It's kind of coming out. O And maybe I'll put down here tree outside window. So here I think I will go ahead and put the pathway that I've seen. So for this, I think I want to use a red pen or a red pencil crayon. But in order to do that, I need to make sure everything else is colored in first. So I'm just going to skip ahead till after I'm done coloring it, and then I'll show you adding in that pathway and some notes. Now that it's colored and I've added a couple notes, I'm just going to add in the path of the crow. So most of the time the crow comes in kind of through this way or that way, lands around here and is like, giving the twigs to the female or the other one, I don't know, or stuffing them in, hops onto a lower branch and then kind of comes out. So I know I want this to be like a swooping to go there, and then's maybe just make this little dramatic. So I can put an arrow this way. It's coming in. And then hop hop. There we go. So here I can just add a little thing that says Crows usual Path. You know, I know it's just a very basic key there, so I can see that. I could even just put a little arrow beside that and say Crow's basic path and then go right to there. But the red, because there's no other red in this image, stands out really well, especially with the colored pencil. So you can just see exactly where it's going. 7. Adding colour to our map: So let's add some color to this thing because I drew this with a waterproof black ink. I can just come in with my watercolor and just add my color. So I'm not very precious with this. I just mostly want to get down, those main colors. So I know what I'm looking at helps me see quickly kind of what everything is. So I'm just going to add some green. Just mix that up to all these areas So when I do grass, I like to mix up the greens that I put down. Just kind of helps to show I don't know, a variation. I think it looks cool. Add some blues in some places, and then more yellow in other places. And I'm kind of doing a circular technique because this paper, you can see the streaks pretty easily. So I'm trying to eliminate that as much as I can. Let's see here. Go around. Because this was kind of a marshy area, I think I'm just gonna make this a bit more yellowy into sort of a brownish color. Just hopefully that will just kind of mix in a little. Then I'll try to blend that back a little. Something like that. So I've just added in some water here, and I could paint the roads, but I think I'm going to leave that as white just because the contrast of that looks really nice, and I can see the road really easily. I am, however, gonna mix up a darker green for some of my trees over here. So I'm gonna be careful not to Yeah, so I know that those are trees, and there we go. Wipe that off. And there is my map so simple, but that's the point, right? We don't want to get too complicated with our maps. We mostly just want to show where we were, where we've been. I could put, like, a red line for the pathway that I took. That might be cool. There you go. 8. Adding colour to our diagram: Color this one in. This tree is pretty light. It is brown, but it's not super it's not a super dark tree, so I'm just going to fill that in with this. Just get a couple of darker bits kind of on the side, get some shadows in there. And then I'm going to just suggest where all those leaves are. I don't really want to draw all those in because it will clutter up my drawing, and I really want to see kind of where that nest is, where the path is. So I'm just gonna add let's vary up that color as I go. Some parts that are more green. And so I'm just using the side of my brush, kind of smushing it down. Go right over top of that. Some blue more blue, some areas. So it's more sporadic the leaves out here, so I'll just do some of that and then kind of have this go up higher. There, so I showed that this was a tree without even putting any tree bits in there. So the nest here, if I paint this brown, it might just blend in with this. So what I could do is paint a lot of green around it, or I could make the brown of the nest really dark. So I think I'm going to do that so that it stands out. And as that dries, I'm gonna go a little darker in the middle of that. Just to show where that hole would be. There's no babies there right now or anything, so don't need to draw that in. That I might add a little bit more like darker bits here to show that this is cut off. Try slightly different type of brown so that it really stands out. But there you go. There's my basic coloring in, nothing crazy, but we want to keep it simple so we can understand the main point of this, which is just to show the path and where the nest is. 9. Closing: Guys, thanks so much for taking this class. I hope you enjoyed it. Please post any maps that you've done or diagrams. I'd love to see them and check out my other classes. If you're interested in taking more urban sketching classes, I have a class about learning how to draw small landscape. If you'd like to follow me, I have posted my Instagram and my website for you to check out. Thanks so much.