Sketch Journal Maps

Author: Alison Hazel   –   Updated: January 2026

💚  This article is part of my Art as Self-care category.

Maps

I’ve always liked maps. In fact, I have a small collection of maps from places I’ve been. I enjoy drawing maps and usually in my travel journal, but also as fantasy maps in my sketchbooks. In this article I’m sharing how I source maps and draw them in my sketchbooks. I’m also going to be showing you some of my map books and a couple of special maps as well. Alison

Why Maps Are So Powerful

(and How to Create Your Own)

Sketchbooks and journals are often thought of as places for words, words and more words but some of the most revealing pages don’t read like sentences at all. They look more like maps.

Maps in sketchbooks, journals and travel journals, offer a way to explore your thoughts, emotions and ideas about a place or time without forcing them into neat lines. They allow for wandering, circling back, layering and taking a moment to pause.

For artists especially, to map or mapping can feel more honest than writing things out “properly.”

Why Maps Work So Well in Journals

Maps Make Inner Landscapes Visible

Some experiences are hard to explain but easy to place. A map lets you show what feels close, what feels distant, what overlaps and what remains undefined. Instead of describing your inner world, you can draw it with a map.

Maps Reflect How We Actually Think

Thoughts don’t arrive in paragraphs. They cluster, drift in, repeat and interrupt each other. I believe that mapping mirrors this non-linear way of thinking, making it easier to notice patterns and relationships without overanalyzing them.

Maps Blend Words and Images Naturally

Maps invite symbols, color, texture and gesture alongside language. A single shape can hold more meaning than a sentence. A line can suggest movement, tension, or connection without explanation.

Maps Reduce Pressure

A map doesn’t need to be tidy or finished. You can add to it over time, cross things out, redraw it, or abandon it halfway through. There’s no correct outcome, but rather only further exploration.

Maps Show Change Over Time

Returning to the same kind of map weeks or months later can be revealing.

• What has moved closer?
• What has faded?
• What has expanded beyond the edges of the page?

Maps quietly record change without judgment.

How to Create Maps

Google Maps

When I draw the map of my city, Vancouver, I go to Google maps. I open the map and stretch it to fit the screen and make it the size I want.

Screenshot

Then I take a screenshot which becomes my reference drawing. At this stage I’m just looking for the main coastline and any important roads or landmarks.

Vancouver Art Map

In this example, I’m drawing my Vancouver Art Map, which is a map of the places I have already been to for some sketching in my city. On this map you can see the Canada Geese and the Inukshuk which I sketched last year.

Time

As I continue with my urban sketching in and around my city, I’ll mark the spots on the map where I’ve gone for an art date with myself to sketch.

Art Map Drawing

Pencil

I lightly sketch the coastline and anything else I need to start. At this point there is not much on the page.

Black Pen

Once I’m happy with the layout I’ll go over it with a 0.3mm black pen.

Sea and Ocean

I use a colored pencil in blue to shade the edge of the coast where the sea is. I usually do about 5mm from the black line. I don’t usually color all the water in blue, but rather just the edge.

Fantasy Maps

Treasure Island

This is a fantasy map I drew of a place I’m calling “Treasure Island.” I started with a loose island outline in pencil. Next comes the black pen.

Map Symbols

I noted some things on the map. Some features are just me tinkering, like the little houses, and some are more traditional map symbols.

Compass Rose

I like to fill some empty space in the sea with a compass rose. This points north and is found on many maps.

Title Block

I usually draw a title block for the map in one corner. This information block can get fancy with a flourishing font if you like. Here you can add the cartographer’s name and the date and other interesting facts.

Border

Maps always benefit from a border around the outside. Your borders can be single line of a more complex affair. It’s up to you.

Lighthouse

There always seems to be a need for a lighthouse perched on some craggy rock either on land or on a rocky knoll.

Paths and Roads

Dotted footpaths show where things are on the island. Roads are usually a straight line. Railways have marks on them like train tracks.

Caves

Sometimes I’ll add a cave as perhaps the buried treasure in hidden in there. Who knows?

Beaches

Now and then around the island you can add a deeper sandy beach perhaps with some cliffs overlooking it.

Sea

In a black and white pen-and-ink map I like to suggest the sea with parallel lines running around the coast. I usually do three lines slightly further out from each other and the last line often is broken up with dashes and dots here and there.

Good Omens

Fan Map Art

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, is a book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. The story has been made into a TV mini-series as well. I’m a huge fan of this fantasy work. So for my fan art for this story I drew a map of Lower Tadfield, which is the imaginary village where the story is set. This piece I created as a digital artwork and you can see my copy below.

Old Maps

Ptolemy’s World Map

Ancient maps are fascinating subjects. They offer a window into how people once understood the world around them. Claudius Ptolemy, who lived from around 90 to 168 CE, worked at the great Library of Alexandria in Egypt. 

Below is a photo of Ptolemy’s map in my favorite map book called Great Maps: The world’s masterpiece explored and explained by Jerry Brotton.

Mediterranean Sea

Ptolemy’s World map is centered on the Mediterranean Sea and shows all the lands known to the classical world at that time.

Modern Maps

Fuller’s Dymaxion Map

The dymaxion map by Buckminster Fuller is a brilliant design which shows the whole of the Earth as an icosahedron.

Icosahedron

An icosahedron is a solid with 20 triangular faces. Fuller projected the Earth onto this shape and then unfolded it into a flat layout.

When opened out it looks like a connected pattern of triangles rather than a rectangle. If you draw it out carefully and cut it out you can make your own 3D globe map which I find so very interesting. Fuller’s idea was to show the world with much less distortion and without putting any continent at the top or bottom.

The dymaxion map can be folded in different ways which was part of Fuller’s point which is that there is no single correct orientation of the world north/south wise.

My Copy

Above is the dymaxion map I ordered and which now adorns the wall in my art studio (lounge). I love it and I spend frequent moments looking at the details in this drawing.

Antarctica Map

Digital Art

A while ago I had a phase of drawing all the continents on Earth and this is my Antarctica map. I simply made it by opening Google Maps, zooming Antarctica into the frame and taking a screenshot.

Procreate

Next, I copied the screenshot into Procreate, where I do my digital art, and here I simply drew the outline of the continent and added just one or two of the major features. The most important of which is, of course, the South Pole and the fact that all the lines of latitude emerge from this point.

The Life of Christ

Original by: Reverend Clarence Larkin 1892

This is a particularly interesting map. It was originally drawn by Reverend Clarence Larkin way back in 1892 and this is a revised Copyright edition 1894 by the Reverend I.N. Earl.

This is a combination of map and a chart, and it shows, by the black line where Christ went in his lifetime. It’s the path he took throughout his life and the main people and places he visited.

Palestine in the Time of Christ

As a combination chart, there is the map of Palestine at the time, there is also the timeline, literally, of where Jesus went from his birth to his death and resurrection.

There is a more detailed inserted sketch map of Jerusalem depicting the city during the last week of his life.

Below is a table the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John showing at which periods in his life they wrote about by time.

At the bottom is a details key to the chart highlighting all the major events of Christ’s life.

Matt Baker

I was put onto this chart by Matt Baker from Useful Charts on YouTube and he, too, lives here in Vancouver. You can check out his video about this particular map and the life of Jesus.

My Dream Residence

Dream on… , Alison

My dream residence is a map of how I would like to perhaps live my life one day. My idea was if I came into money or won the lottery, I would like to buy a piece of ground somewhere within 100 km of Vancouver, perhaps in Kelowna or somewhere, or up in Horseshoe Bay.

If I had enough land probably an acre or two, I would be able to establish my dream residence.

If I had a dream home, it would contain a main house where I live with my cat. It will also have a place to be as a retreat, perhaps for as a writing retreat, a yoga retreat, music, art or astrology retreat or some kind of craft family retreat.

This retreat would be as a place where people (just like you) could come perhaps for the weekend and do some creative or artistic endeavors.

A-frame Cabins

I had an idea to create some A-frame cabins. I think I’ve got three there highlighted in yellow. These cabins would be where my guests would drive up, come and stay and there’s room to park your car with slight privacy from the hedges.

Great Hall

We would then have the Great Hall where things could get done, where events could be held and this build includes a kitchen and so on, so lunches could be served and whatnot.

Garden Room Features

Additionally, on this map. I have an herb garden which I love.

I’ve got a labyrinth garden as well as a maze.

There’s a small pond. I would assume there’s fish in there or is it a wildlife pond? I’m not quite sure.

I’m also planning to grow a dying garden and what that means is growing plants so I could use their colours to dye yarn with. These would be plants like indigo and woad to dye yarns and fabrics. You could grow the plants and then work them down and create actual natural dyes, and or inks which could be used in the local craft industry as well.

The Lodge

And because I dream big, I’ve also got what I’m calling The Lodge for staff residences. I see this as a place where, perhaps, the cleaning staff or the cooks, or the gardeners where could stay and attend to the whole residence.

The Ideal

Yeah, this is a dream residence I have in my mind. It would be ideal. A place where I could live, my children could live, my extended family could come and visit.

It would also be a way that I could give back to the artistic and creative community. This is my dream with family and community, and this is the map I drew so I could visualize it as well.

Overarch

Inspiration

I’m sharing these maps with you to give you some inspiration. Many of these maps I drew myself. Some are from the real world which I copied straight from Google Maps and others are fantasy ideas from my head. There are also the travel maps I did when we went to Mexico and to Tofino and you could check those out as well.

What Maps are Not

I like maps because they don’t have to be massive, they don’t have to be highly detailed. They could be a short, small little vignette, if you will, on your sketchbook page. Just to clue everybody in as to where you were and what you did.

Over to You

Let me know if you’d like me to share any of these maps with you in greater detail and whether they are worthy of their own independent article.

Author Bio: Alison Hazel