[Qgis-user] How to draw a custom map on top of loaded layer

[xone]

Greetings,

I'm looking for the easiest way to draw a custom layer and export it as a tile cache.   Basically what I would like to be able to do is load a base layer, and then draw objects and annotations on top of it and export these objects and annotations as a raster (GeoTIFF) than I can them run through MapTiler.  I'd like my custom map to include both polygons, circles, and text, sort of like using a georeferenced Adobe Illustrator.   What's the best process to do this?

Thanks!

x.