WIP - Freehand mountains

[Chick]

Still trying to learn, I've created my very first totally freehand drawn (mouse, not tablet), freehand shaded mountains. I would sure love some feedback on both look and techniques for doing these.

Cheers,
Cornelia

Freehand Mountains 01.jpg

[Wingshaw]

Nice start. A few suggestions:
--thinner lines for the main outline;
--lighter lines (I find two ways of doing this: either, reduce opacity from 100% to about 80%; or use a dark colour that matches the overall palette; in that case, a very dark brown)
--some of your lesser ridge lines look good, others less. I guess practice is the key to that, and, in my opinion, it is always useful to research. A general suggestion, though, try to make the lines longer, and more varied (they don't all have to come from the central ridge).
--maybe: less twisted shapes for the mountains (the twisted shapes you've done can be a good choice in some settings; especially if you are aiming for something that looks jagged and creepy)
--try to make the shading fade as it reaches the bottom of the mountains. My method is to lower the brush opacity to ~20% (or even 5-10%) and, rather than using brush strokes, just keep clicking until you build up the amount of 'ink.' Doing it this way allows you to make the colours darker in certain areas, and lighter in others. Aim to keep it darkest close to ridge lines (main and lesser lines)
--add some highlights: same as the shadows, but with a light colour. Again, aim to place it on the ridges, but on the sunny side of the mountains.
--I think a good idea with mountains, especially when not using some kind of preset mountain-shaped brush, is to try to make ranges of mountains, rather than single peaks. It tends to look more natural, and also serves to highlight the hand-drawn essence.
--it can sometimes help to change the colour of mountains in various places (eg greener near the base, pale or near-white at the tip).
--a trick I use to make mountains look more realistic is to include wisps of cloud around the peaks (a low-hardness brush and medium opacity, followed by the blur tool), and/or fog in the valleys.
--practice, practice, practice (deliberately copying or tracing someone else's mountains--for private purposes, of course--doesn't hurt)

still...for now:
THW

[xpian]

Cornelia, I'd like to help. This is kind of in my bailiwick. I'd like to congratulate you for taking on new challenges, and for stepping up and putting this out there for feedback and criticism. Everything we say to each other here should be taken as constructive.

I've marked up a version of your posted image, where I've tried to explain some of the stuff I'm seeing. I agree with much of what @THW said, but my comments are a bit more structural (with regards to the ink-work). Note that a number of the things I point out are actually present in many places, but I may have only highlighted one instance for clarity.

Practice Practice Practice.

Cornelia_Feedback.jpg

As long as we're talking about learning and early efforts at mountain drawing, I'd like to share something I did in early 2012 while going through some of the tutorials that Torstan or Sapiento had put up. I've drawn a whole lot more mountains since these days:

2012-03-17-17_33_03.jpg

[Scrit]

My two cents, here.

Alphonso Dunn - Pen & Ink Drawing Tutorials: How to Draw Mountains.

While the medium here is pen and ink, the focus is primarily on the basic shapes, and shading. Good luck on your work, Cornelia. Hope to see more.

[Chick]

Personally, I think I like these trees the way they are now. I did have tree trunks on them, but they were so small that you had to zoom way in to even see them, and all they really did was add darkness. For a closer view, the trunks would be fine.

I don't like the idea of trying to blend the edges of the forest smoothly into the background color. I think that would work ok for something that was trying to look very realistic (as darkshade says), but mapping is more about depicting locations, boundaries, edges, and terrain types (as ascension suggests), so the edges of the forests look ok to me now. I don't see the need for dark lines just because the mountains have them, as long as the edges of both are clean. The color is darker than I really wanted, but the more I look at it, the better I like it.

[Ascension]

Drawing with a tablet will help the lines fade out to thin points but if you don't have a tablet then grab the Smudge tool (Photoshop) and then grab the end and swipe it away and it will taper for ya. And do make it more horizontal at the bottoms sort of like the bottom of a fine goblet. It takes a lot of time to do a lot of lines that way but it's all you can do sans tablet. You could also use smaller brushes to achieve the taper look but that also takes a lot of time. Overall, though, not too shabby. Keep it up.

[Chick]

OK, here is my next attempt, trying to incorporate all the great ideas you all have given me. I can certainly see that these look better than the first try, so all the time you guys took to give advice was not wasted! I would love even more feedback. Some of these lines were done with a tablet, as I'm trying to get better with it, but I still can't control the pressure very well, so the tapered ends of lines were done with PS fade.

Freehand Mountains 02.jpg

[Ilanthar]

Those mountains are nice! But why your hills are done in such a different style? Is it a test? Both are interesting, but they don't fit together imho.

[Chick]

Those mountains are nice! But why your hills are done in such a different style? Is it a test? Both are interesting, but they don't fit together imho.

Originally I was using the PS mountain brushes that matched those hills. When I decided to try my hand at actually drawing mountains, this became a learning project. Once I'm happy with the mountains and how to draw them, I will go back and try my hand at the hills So right now, I'm mostly interested in how to make the mountains look like the rest of you awesome artists do

[Deadshade]

I like this last attempt.
However you have still a problem - all of your mountains have the same height.
To get a more realistic look you draw a ridge where the first peaks close to the plain are much smaller than those farther in. Eventually it culminates in 1 or a few highest peaks and then goes again down.
For instance in your example I would see the highest peak in the middle of the right edge then the range height decreases to South and west.