Everything other than fine details such as shading, foliage, the border, etc. is drawn on in pencil, and often this stage of the map-making process takes more time than the actual final drawing and calligraphy in ink. I use various methods to transfer geographic elements to the map itself. For my earliest maps I employed the square grid technique: I draw a grid over a print of a map (something I find open source online usually), and a second (usually larger) grid on the paper, and then copy by eye in pencil, square by square, one at a time.

By far the most important aspect while drawing in pencil is planning and writing the toponyms (place-names). It is a fine art to balance exactly where each place-name goes. The geography itself is static, i.e. where something is located cannot change, so where its label can go is relatively limited. I try to avoid drawing lines from label to place as much as possible, though sometimes it cannot be avoided on dense maps. I also have to be sure to leave enough space between names to actually draw some geography.

More recently, I’ve adopted the technique of backlight tracing, which saves me a lot of time; simply put, I place an image to be copied behind the map on a backlight drawing board, then trace over it. Easy (sort-of). Another technique I’ve discovered to transfer a particular smaller picture (of a ship or something), is to print an image, place it face-down on the backlight, and draw the image on the reverse side using a soft pencil (usually 4B). Then, I place that pencil-down onto my map, and rub against it, to transfer the pencil drawing onto the map. This technique worked wonders for transferring the logos of the whisky and gin distilleries onto those maps.