Maps in Illustrator

Wow, these look great! I need to investigate illustrator's capabilities!
Click on the pic to see more like this.

The ever long quest for watercolor

I would really like to figure out how to do this water color technique digitally:


Here's another example:


This one was done by hand - in other words someone actually used watercolor paints to fill it in, but there has to be a way to do this in photoshop or something....

I see it everywhere in magazines - especially Backpacker or Outside. Anyone got it figured out?

Hello

Hi Everyone - welcome to my cartography blog.
Let's go explore some maps!