WIP Handdrawn ISO region map

[Barek333]

Decided to play a bit with the drawing tools since I finally got my wacom intuos

This will be a map centered on a forest on slopes of a big mountain chain. Within the forest lives a wise old hermit. The adventurers that are out to find him have to navigate through the forest and avoid a fair set of unpleasantness to reach him. The points of interest will therefore be bigger and more pronounced since they will literally move their characters over the map..which will be revealed to them step by step. This struck me as a nice idea for a DnD session and also will make me train hand drawing which is what I want to learn since I love doodling and sketching. I'll be using a ton of info from the interwebs and this site. Mostly torstans, djekspeks and larbs tutorials and maps.

I will post my efforts in a step by step mode this time which will give me more chance for a critique from you guys and also help me organize myself a bit since everything I've done so far has only the final version and no in between steps. Which isn't all that great when you are a beginner and want to remember that one cool setting you used.

So here it goes:

First I made the background from a 8% opacity diff.clouds a green backgroud with colors from larbs tutorial and two background patterns:a rust one and an old paper one.
hermit_background.jpg


Then I sketched a rough map of what will come on the map later: Mountains,maybe hills, a river, forest with points of interest.
hermit_sketch.jpg

And the last step so far was to draw in the detailed mountains. Note here that at the bottom left I made them too flat/small probably. But since they are almost hills there I may leave them like that.
Hermits_mountains.jpg


Any comments will be welcome.

Cheers,
Barek

[a.coldyham]

I'm assuming that the line along the ridge will be toned down at some point

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[Barek333]

Now that you say it, it does seem a bit strong. I intended it to be thicker, maybe I made it too thick..will see.

[Ilanthar]

Except for the already mentioned question of the ridge line, it looks like a very good start imo.

[Barek333]

So to continue with todays work:

I tried to make the main mountain arch less visible and I think it worked ok-ish.

Then I quickly made a river layer on which I drew the river already in color and just left it there for orientation.
Afterwards came the forest layer. Here I spent some more time for sketching the outline and trying to show where the hills and mountain chains end. I made 8 clearings in the forest where my points of interest will go.

Hermits_hut_forest.jpg

Then I made the buildings layer on which I drew the points of interest

Hermits_hut_buildings.jpg

So far I am pleased with how it went. I am happy with my sketches, of course there is room for major improvement but for beginning I'm ok with this.
Next up will be adding some details to the surrounding plains..not much thought since the focus is on the forest. And then coloring and shading.

One thing I noticed is that I should have probably made a bigger map since my points of interest were imagined with to much details for the amount of pixels I had to work with.

Again, any comment, suggestion, opinion is very much welcome and appreciated.

Cheers,
Barek

[Barek333]

Thanks Ilanthar

I the new update I tried to remedy that issue.

[Barek333]

After a lot of work shading of mountains was done. I used three different layers and tried to do it similar to torstan. One layer for background color, one for highlights and the last one to change the color from brown to grey/bluish.

Hermits_hut_mountains_shaded.jpg

After that I shaded the forest. Again I made three layers, one was for the base color, the second for the dark parts on the underlying mountain ridges and hills and two different highlights to give some variation to the color. The third layer for the little forest shadow to try and give some perspective. I blurred layers two and three.

Hermits_hut_forest_shaded.jpg

While I am happy to a point with the results I find the forest color a bit lacking, also that shadow needs work.

Any comments and suggestions about these issues..or about anything else are welcome and appreciated!

Cheers,
Barek

[a.coldyham]

The most glaring point is the difference between the three styles in the mountains, forest and river. It's your call on which is the effect you were going for, but as it is, that doesn't work for me.

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[Barek333]

Care to elaborate why the forest and the mountains dont go together like this?

[a.coldyham]

Maybe it's just the colours, but the forest looks cartoony and the mountains more like a 'realistic' effect. Don't ask me what the right mountains for that forest (or vice versa) though, I have less idea what I'm doing