January 2015 Challenge: The Lost Village

[Chick]

I guess I'll start out by making a parchment scroll for this map. I've piled together some textures that I like, and drawn a ragged edge and something that vaguely resembles rolled up corners. My map will be on this scroll.

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Challenge Jan2015 01.jpg

My plan is .... er, well, .... I'm going to do this without using any brushes, only freehand drawing. I need some serious practice with my cheap little tablet and pen.

And all of you who know that I flunked Crayons 101 in the second grade, stop laughing!!

[Chick]

A river and the coastline of low cliffs. This is the first ever cliffs I've drawn in my life, so all you great freehand artists, please feel free to tell me everything I've done wrong. Same for the river, I guess.

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Challenge Jan2015 02.jpg

The Lost Village will be around the river mouth, maybe onto the island. I expect I'll put some mountains in the background. And I'll undoubtedly need to learn to draw a waterfall, too.

[Wingshaw]

Those cliffs look fine, to me. There's only one problem that I've noticed: the top of the cliff appears to be vertically above the bottom of the cliff, which implies a perfectly vertical cliff-face. The angle of the 'cliff lines,' however, implies the cliff slopes inward, a bit. Either a vertical cliff or a sloping one can work (I tend to prefer a sloping one, as it looks more realistic), but not both.

Also, your cliffs will look even better when you add colour and shadows/highlights.

Finally, you may have flunked Crayons 101, but you're nailing Cartography 101, and that is a more advanced subject

Keen to see how this develops.

THW

[Chick]

Finally, you may have flunked Crayons 101, but you're nailing Cartography 101, and that is a more advanced subject

Keen to see how this develops.

THW

Thanks, THW, you have no idea how good that simple comment makes me feel

[Chick]

I think this is done. I just need some opinions on two things!

Forest tree trunks or no forest tree trunks?

Building shadows or no building shadows?

Challenge Jan2015 11 WITH.jpg Challenge Jan2015 11 WITHOUT.jpg

[Deadshade]

The cliffs wouldn't have the exactly same height along hundreds of km of coast. On some places they would be higher and on some lower. I'd suggest to draw this upper line more rugged.
Also like THW said, the slope will not be identical everywhere - break those vertical lines a bit. As you want them near vertical, the lines will be near to a vertical but not quite and not the same everywhere.
Then adding shading will really roughen up those faces for real.

The river is fine. I draw them always much more wiggly but it is a matter of taste. Also I am surprised by the regularity of the trait - when I draw by hand, the outlines are much more irregular - rather a succession of shorter strokes, lines and curves than a long stroke where the pen doesn't leave the paper.

Btw did you find this parchment background somewhere or you created it with a random generator ?

[Chick]

It's my intention that the "cliffs" are vertical but low, like in the less than 50' range, so mostly vertical. The village will fill the open region along the river, so that should give you more sense of scale. This map is roughly 3-4 miles across in the foreground, and obviously much larger back in the mountains. I'm not sure what this perspective is called, but I'm thinking of it sort of like a wide-angle lens.

I'm not sure what you mean, Deadshade, about the regularity of the lines. Most of this, including the coastlines and river, are drawn in one long pen stroke. Is that wrong?

On the parchment background ... neither. I created the parchment myself, using several layers of textures (parchment and grunge) that I have saved, and then used various blending modes and opacities to combine them, until I got both the color and the grungy look that I wanted.

[Deadshade]

I'm not sure what you mean, Deadshade, about the regularity of the lines. Most of this, including the coastlines and river, are drawn in one long pen stroke. Is that wrong?

.

Hehe nothing is wrong in hand drawing
It's only that if you make a long stroke you'll generaly get a regular smooth line. If you wanted irregular and rugged, short strokes are better.

When you do a mountain range, do you see it in front of your inner eye or do you draw each mountain like a stamp (e.g independently from the global context) ?

To illustrate what I mean, I cut out one part of your picture and made a superfast sketch.
I only erased the lines that didn't fit and added lines that naturally follow from your context - otherwise it's exactly what you did.
I just added some crude shadows because when I do a line I can't stop myself adding shadows to remind me the orientation of the surface. This helps to avoid lines that don't fit.
Basically I was only imagining what you wanted to do and copied on paper what I was seeing in my head.
I hope it helps.

Challenge%.jpg

[Chick]

Deadshade, you are a wonderful artist, but there is no way I can draw like that I did actually try to make ridge lines, but I pictured them running top to bottom of the map. Also, the amount of detail (for example on the cliffs) maybe exceeds what someone drawing a map like this on parchment would do.

In fact, I even put ground shadows on the buildings, but then looking at it, it made no sense that someone drawing this map would do that, so I took them off.

So here is the next iteration, with buildings, and with shadings that seem to make sense for this type of map. I'm of course open to alternate opinions

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Challenge Jan2015 06.jpg

That leaves me with

The waterfall (ouch, more drawing)
Water ripples
Numbering the buildings
Writing the legend

Comments and opinions always welcome!

[Chick]

This morning, I drew the mountains, trying to use the techniques that many of you showed me a month or so ago in my "Freehand Mountains" thread. I still feel like I should do better with them, but time is short ....

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Challenge Jan2015 03.jpg

Just trying to decide the correct order to do things next. Shading obviously will come last, so now it's either forests or the village buildings, and since there isn't much overlap, it probably doesn't matter. I'm dreading the buildings ....