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ap-cartography.bsky.social
AP. Cartography
@ap-cartography.bsky.social
1.7K followers 780 following 710 posts
🇬🇧 UK
💚 She/her
🗺️ Fantasy Mapmaker
📝 Solo RPG Maker, Player and Enthusiast
✍🏼 All art I post is made by me, a human. No room for AI here.

https://ap-cartography.carrd.co/
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ap-cartography.bsky.social
Example of a previous attempt at some kind of early map scratched into a cliff face - although this one had been by a child who developed a love of maps and became a cartographer. This is a simplification of the valley he could see from the mountainside behind his home.
A childish drawing as if scratched into rock, showing some mountains, two rivers, some trees and houses and four creatures or monsters around such as a giant with a spiky club, a dragon, a three headed snake and a dog-like creature spitting fire
November 3, 2025 at 7:42 AM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
I forgot to mention I made a full colour map for this (totally optional for your game) and there is a black and white version for you to print and colour in too! 🧡
A fully coloured drawing of a huge tree with orange and yellow leaves, with some specks of light floating just underneath it. Sheltered by the tree is a village, featuring suggested areas such as a crystal grove by some residential houses, one of which is a mushroom house, near a duck pond and a hill with some tiny doors and windows in it. There is a leaf fort, a collection of shops, a market place and a clocktower. A large cauldron sits near a couple of tables with some huge garden produce and other festival foods and decorations. A pumpkin patch lies near some apple trees, a huge maze, some festival tents and an enchanted garden.
October 25, 2025 at 11:03 AM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
For a little while now I've wanted to attempt to make a dungeon map, and when I saw molomoot's Crossword Dungeons, I knew I just had to try it. I love this idea and it was so fun to do! It might not make much sense, and I probably made mistakes, but here you go....my first dungeon map!
A monochrom map of a dungeon, built off and inspired by a crossword. The title reads : Kozruk's Vault, A Crossword Dungeon. Beneath it is a list of nine locations on the map with brief descriptions. 1. Main Entrance - The door is made of thick hardwood - to keep something out, or in? 2. Room of Curiosities - There is an odd collection of items here, including a bloody dagger, and an ominous artefact. 3. Hall of Trophies - Eight plinths bear peculiar trophies of a macabre nature. The central plinth is empty...for now. 4. Practice Arena - Sand covers the floor, a rack of weapons stand ready. Careful, you may sink here. 5. Something Secret - Behind a boulder lies a dark entrance to someone's, or something's, hiding place. 6. Dragon Brazier - A carved dragon looks down into an ever-burning brazier of purple flame. Did it just blink? 7. Laboratory - Barely legible notes are scattered on the desk, but it is clear the "patient" has gone missing. 8. An Escape? - Behind a broken stockade and past the bloodstains, a hole in the wall. Maybe it leads to freedom? 9. The Planning Room - Both drinks and blood has been spilled here. A dagger pierces a map, obscuring a key location.
September 30, 2025 at 7:37 PM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Happy Hobbit Day, to any fellow Tolkien nerds! 💚 Here's a throwback to a fan map of The Shire that I still kinda want to rework the framing of. There will come a day when I do that, but it is not this day!
A map of The Shire from Tolkien's Middle Earth, echoing the style found in the books with some additional details. In the bottom left corner a figure of a hobbit stands on a patch of grass, wearing a backpack and holding a walking stick. The hobbit looks out towards the map.
September 22, 2025 at 1:32 PM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
One more week to go! I am so ready to get cosy and whimsical. ✨
Screenshot of an itch jam that reads: Cosy Whimsical Fantasy Jam Hosted by AP. Overview: Submissions open from September 15th 2025 at 1:00am to October 31st 2025 at 12:00am Beneath is a countdown for when it starts, currently showing : Starts in 7 days, 14 hours, 29 minutes, 23 seconds
September 7, 2025 at 9:35 AM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Hello there! I randomly decided it was past time I did a face reveal of the human behind the art and posts on here. So hi, I'm AP! 👋
Central to the image is a photo of a white woman with long brown hair, wearing glasses and a pale green jumper. The photo has a circular, faded edge, on top of a background of a drawn map on some paper, on top of a dark green background. Underneath the photo is a black and white circular AP. logo
September 3, 2025 at 10:38 AM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
The floating library that features on the original Wandering Library one page RPG has had an upgrade! ✨

Left : original from two years ago
Right : new and updated version

How would your Wandering Library travel?
A screenshot of a Procreate canvas showing a coloured illustration of a magical floating building with shiny gems around it. In the background are hills, trees and some mountains. A screenshot of a Procreate screen with an updated version of the magical floating building from the previous image with a plain background.
August 11, 2025 at 3:03 PM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Did someone say Sunday Punday? No? Oh. Well here you go anyway.

Something made at the end of last year for a friend from a prompt of theirs as part of a "Secret Santa Shitty Art" thing.
A digital drawing of a bird sitting on a branch with a pale blue and white background. The bird has a light brown body with a cream belly and grey feet. Its beak is a sharp angular shape with some white highlights and is the same light grey as the odd shaped feathers from the top and back of its head. Next to it is written 'Halbird' with a zigzag underline.
July 20, 2025 at 7:38 PM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Progress for the new one-page solo RPG is being made! Meet the three types of guardian you will be able to choose to play as in "Little Glade Guardian". From left to right we have: Pinekin, Mossling, and Leafren. Which would you choose? 💚
Three woodland spirits sketched in Procreate. From left to right there is: a Pinekin holding a staff with a gem embedded in the top, a Mossling holding a branch with a gem, and a Leafren holding a large flower.
July 16, 2025 at 6:00 PM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Drawing random maps and wondering about the story behind them is quite fun. Is an inaccurate or badly drawn map done on purpose or not? Maybe by a lazy or underpaid cartographer?

I've just added this map into my Ko-Fi shop, for use in your own Non-Commercial game or story: ko-fi.com/s/26dadac008
A corner of a scroll showing a sepia-toned map with roughly drawn mountains, hills, forests and rivers. There are black icons of castles, towns and towers, some with white marks beneath them for labelling. In the top corner is some text written in the Arcane Cipher font by Aesoterik.
June 17, 2025 at 2:12 PM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Apologies for posting about this again, but I just really wanted to share these silly lil guys. This was an idea given by my wonderful partner. 💚

I wonder what could be on the scroll...maybe a spell? Grandma's secret recipe? Plans for world domination? Or something else...
A digital drawing of two frogs sitting on a log on some water. The left frog is coloured orange and yellow, and is wearing a silly little fedora hat made out of grass and has two little leaves above its mouth like a moustache. The right frog is coloured green and pale yellow, and is passing over a scroll and is wearing an upside-down pink and purple flower on its head. In the middle of the image is AP.'s watermark logo.
June 13, 2025 at 8:46 AM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Map frames are something I need to work on more but I'm rather liking this one so far! Especially this lil fella. Frames are quite often the last thing I consider when mapmaking, but I wanted to work on this one first this time. I might add to it later, but for now, I am content with it how it is.
Screenshot of a Procreate screen. In the right corner of a page an owl-like bird is in flight, framed by two circles and a ribbon draped over the edge of a piece of a wooden frame. In the bottom left is a snippet of land with some mountains.
June 6, 2025 at 7:14 PM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Aw hope you find some time to rest and do creative things soon! But yeah it's so cool to see and is a great little challenge too. I forgot to post the other one I did with a different palette..
I cheated with this one though as I did use some multiply and airbrushing! xD
A digital drawing of a black bird with white tipped beak and tail and a red eye, seated atop a pale sword with a red ribbon tied around the handle, sticking out of a mound of pale green grass with small pale flowers. A five colour palette strip is seen on the left with the pale beige, green, red and black colours.
May 18, 2025 at 10:22 AM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
This could be the most colourful settlement I've ever made. I hadn't been sure about it at first, but I am rather liking it so far!

#wip #fantasymap #humanmade
A hand holding a stylus working on a digital map showing part of a city with colourful roofs
May 8, 2025 at 1:15 PM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Self-promotion is always hard to do, and something I often forget to do too. But here's just a lil reminder that I have a few things over in my Ko-Fi shop available if you should like to toss some coins my way (and many, many thanks in advance if you do choose to 💚)

ko-fi.com/apmaps/shop
A grid of six images with a green label of a price in the bottom right corner of each, and part of the descriptive text beneath each. The top row have three colored maps: from left to right - a town map, a village map and a regional map. The second row has a small contintent map in sepia tones, and two solo journaling RPGs.
May 6, 2025 at 9:45 AM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
The colouring is well under way! I'm not sure if this or shading is my favourite part of the process. What's yours?

#wip #fantasymap #humanmade
A hand holds a stylus to a tablet, working on colouring a tree on a map where grass and ground have already been coloured, with other trees and bushes and buildings still in black and white scattered around.
May 2, 2025 at 9:02 AM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Finally at the shading stage! The linework is done, for now (I'll probably add a bunch of labels later once I've thought of names) so now on to adding some shade to bring some life into it before moving on to the colour stage. Feeling pretty good about this map so far!

#wip #fantasymap #humanmade
A close up view of a hand holding a wacom stylus, working on a black and white drawing of a map showing a section with lots of trees and some buildings in the top corner, and a hill to the right with a tower and some broken walls around it.
April 29, 2025 at 10:02 AM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Slowly working on a tiny (A5) map of a city and questioning why I decided to do this. Hopefully it'll be worth it in the end, but I do need to find something to speed up the process if I want to do more cities! What would your advice be?

#wip #mapmaker #digitalcartography #fantasymap
A photo of a hand holding a wacom pen stylus working on the line art of a city map. The edges of the photo are blurred, with the focus being on a circular area around the hand and pen.
April 17, 2025 at 11:29 AM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Inspired by a @drawfeeshow.com video where they could only use 5 colours to make art, I set up this same challenge for me and some friends to have fun with. It really is a challenge! Here's the first piece from the first palette (which I've titled "Jean E. In A Bottle" because I like puns)
A digital drawing on a brown-grey background. To the left is a snippet of a five colour palette, from top to bottom: purple, pink, light green, pale green, peach. On the right, within a rectangular frame of peach, pink and purple colours sits a potion bottle with the cap off. From the bottle seems to rise a light green haired head of a witch wearing a purple hat with a pink rim light and a light green band. The witches face is mostly covered by her hair, with just a smile visible.
April 10, 2025 at 7:57 AM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
My recent game fixation has been 'Tiny Glade' by @pouncelight.bsky.social Not only is this a cute creative game to play in, it's a great source for inspiration and for making references to draw from! Can highly recommend. 💚

- Drawn in Procreate by me, a human -
A screenshot of a drawing in Procreate. A cottage with a blue tiled roof, pale walls and wooden beams, is seen in a small box in the top left. On the right and bigger, is a drawing with similar features as the picture but with some differences.
April 2, 2025 at 12:17 PM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Halfway through a free digital art summit being run by TwoTap, and today's session on making a cute monster was so much fun to watch I just had to try it myself. It's far from perfect but I like this lil guy so felt like sharing with you all!

- Drawn in Procreate. Human made. -
A digital drawing of a monster character on a white background. The character has a pointy triangular shaped head with two two-pronged horns. It's smiling with a few odd teeth protruding. The body of the character has a pale fluffy patch on its belly, two flipper like arms and long two-toed feet. The main colours are yellow, orange and red, with blue eyes.
March 25, 2025 at 8:57 PM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Today hasn't been a great day, but I finished off the first little piece of something new I'm working on and I gotta say....I love it....which is always a little weird to say about my own work, but there it is! This is just a little snippet of the first of six pieces I'll be making eventually.
A zoomed in screenshot of a Procreate canvas and drawing. A number of thatched roof houses sit on a hill with a windmill central to the drawing, a farm to the left and more farms and patches of trees on the hills in the background.
March 20, 2025 at 7:00 PM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Motivation, inspiration, energy....all these things have been somewhat lacking this week. But rather than dwelling on that...here, have a look at a dwelling!

This is the family home of Thorvik Dalver, a traveling cartographer who has since left on a grand mapmaking journey.

(Drawn in Procreate)
A digital coloured drawing of the interior of an old fashioned house. Inside we see a bedroom, a work area, pantry and open fire cooking area. The house looks as though it is built partly within the ground and has large wooden beams and a grass covered roof.
February 28, 2025 at 3:01 PM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Outside of mapping, I have discovered the joy of making cute things with crochet. This was my latest creation that still makes me happy when I look at it, even if it's far from perfect. What other creative hobbies do you have?

(Body was made from the Chibi Basic Body crochet pattern by Crochethea)
A crocheted character made with green wool and wearing a red and cream dotted mushroom hat being held up by a hand against a pale background
February 5, 2025 at 11:05 AM
ap-cartography.bsky.social
Not gonna lie, this week has been....challenging. However, I've finally gotten started on my first lil map of 2025 and that feels pretty good. So here's a lil sneaky peek at the current WIP.

Hope you're all looking after yourselves as best you can out there!
Photo of an iPad screen with the focus on a hand holding an Apple pencil working on the line work of a village map.
January 23, 2025 at 4:53 PM