Bluewater Keep

[Tiana]

Bluewater Keep.jpg

A castle / keep work in progress. It's not for a a client. I started fussing with it to try something new. It uses a 3 point perspective grid nightmare and some hillside shaping bits which are invisible at the moment being a foundational sketch and all, but basically the keep is situated in a bit of a valley on an incline. Easily the most complex piece of perspective i've ever tried, and I am personally satisfied with the perspective results as I have never achieved anything of this complexity before. I just sort of hit a pause on the direction. I have some vague idea of doing a top down castle layout to go with it and selling it on DriveThruRPG.

As a sketch, I like it. I think I can get something nice if I color it right. And I do have the vague stirrings of the story of the town/castle to go with.

I am also open to ideas on how to progress to get to a useful kit for a castle keep. I feel like this is the beginnings of a showcase of the town art piece, but there also needs to be a detailed view of the main building to make it useful for a game. If anyone has any good inspirational art that'd be cool. I usually work at a much more distant scale.

For now, since it's unfinished and not cleaned up yet, I don't mind if someone wants to use it non-commercially so if you run into this and this line is intact, the high res is still attached, you are welcome to swipe it for your game or color it for funsies.

[bkh1914]

An ambitious first project for a perspective view.

I must admit that the walls bother me a little bit. With the left and right walls, you are looking down along the length of the wall and I would expect to see the full width of the walkway on top of the wall, while the walkway on the front walls would be partially obscured by the outer parapet so only part of the walkway would be visible. And if there is a wall on the inside, it will obscure part of the walkway on the rear wall as well. Plus, since the front and rear walls are seen at an angle, so they would appear narrower than the walls that are viewed down the length (left and right right walls).
(Just basic geometry, which I'm good at. Drawing is an entirely different issue.)

[Tiana]

"don't type while eating a bowl of ice cream " LOL love the edit reason, I usually just leave my edits blank but that's a good one.

Yeah, the outer walls bug me a bit too, specifically the left and rightmost walls. I am however, not good at basic geometry and can't figure out how to fix them. How that resulted in me being a map artist, I'm not entirely sure. Before I ended up being a cartographer, I mostly did painty impressionist digital art. o_O I would accept redlines of those if someone actually knows how to fix them without just going 'screw this whole thing'.

[bkh1914]

I would accept redlines of those if someone actually knows how to fix them without just going 'screw this whole thing'.

I'll give it a shot later this evening or tomorrow...

[Tiana]

Thanks Bogie. I just realized your name isn't Boogie. Is it supposed to be Bogie like a mysterious aircraft showing up on radar and not in fact dancing or nose leavings?

I'll give it a shot later this evening or tomorrow...

If you do that would be grand, I think way better with a visual reference, but no rush at all.

Anyway, I've always wanted to ask the significance of your avatar.

[bkh1914]

Sorry for the delay. My modem died (it was only ten years old) and I just received a the replacement.

I tried sketching the walls, but drawing/sketching has never been in my skill set. Never will be either. My mind just doesn't work well in only two dimensions.
So I dropped back to doing it with lines and paths.
Here's my interpretation.

Bluewater Keep by Tiana with markup.jpg

(I fiddled with the two rear towers to match my aesthetics - no need for you to do that. And I made all of the front towers square.)

And as an extra bonus, here is a transparent PNG with just my mark-up lines
Bluewater Keep markup lines.png

Anyway, I've always wanted to ask the significance of your avatar.

My avatar is a wood turning.
More specifically, it is a 2 inch sphere turned from aspen and inscribed with two sets of three rings each (and three grooves for each ring). The rings are painted to form interlocking rings, Celtic knot style. The outer rings are painted in the primary colors (red, yellow, blue). The narrower inner rings are the secondary colors (orange, green, purple). In the photograph it looks like the larger front lines magically change into the secondary lines - it took a bit of fiddling to get the sphere positioned right...

I did a bunch of inscribed spheres about twelve years ago and this is one of my favorites. It's simple and colorful.

As an avatar, it describes my primary interest - traditional three-dimensional art: wood turning, pottery, with a spattering of other three-dimensional techniques and media.
I first used it as my avatar on deviantArt and then decided to use the same image here. (Just like my cryptic user name.)

Here is an old picture of the same sphere and two other spheres from a different angle
Balls 019.jpg

[Bogie]

Looks really good Tiana!