“Leonardo Sketch” Map Tileset

Our "charge" was to create a Mapbox tileset in the style of an artist of our choice, and I looked to the hand-drawn sketchbooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) for inspiration.

While he is rightly celebrated for his remarkable paintings, Leonardo drew thousands of sketches--studies for artworks, inventions, botanical images, and much, much more--primarily in ink using a quill or with metalpoint, a method of drawing on coated paper with a metal stylus.

He also used mirror writing. One theory is that because he was left-handed, that prevented him from smudging his work. While I used a typeface based on his handwriting--which is not ideal for clarity on maps!--I opted to at least face the letters the right way.

Tools Used: Mapbox, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop