It's been half a decade since I drew anything at all, but since the coronavirus quarantine began, I've had a chance to rekindle some old hobbies. Returning to drawing has been a pleasant experience so far; I'm badly out of practice, and I was never great to begin with, but something has changed over the last five years. I think I've learned not to judge myself so harshly. That was why I quit, actually. I was so self-critical and hard on myself that drawing lost all joy for a long time, and became an exercise in failing to measure up to the lofty standards I had set for myself. Maybe I've mellowed with age, but I don't feel the need to criticize myself so harshly anymore. Don't get me wrong, I can still see the flaws in my artwork (and there are a lot of them), and I know that I need a lot more practice to even get back to where I was when I stopped drawing, but I'm also aware that I can still draw better than most people could, and I'm able to take pleasure in the creative process

At first I felt like the maps of Tuniitaq and Aztatlan were too plain, too austere, but I really couldn't put my finger on what would make them better. I thought about adding mountains, but I knew that wasn't quite it. Not by themselves, anyway. Suddenly, inspiration struck (as it often does) when I least expected it: while re-reading Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World, I glanced at the first pages of the book and realized that the map of Randland (or whatever it's called - Jordan never really gave a name to the world he spent decades chronicling, strangely) contained exactly what I was looking to add to my maps! All the forests and rivers