Trying out new tablet

[Beoner]

Hi fellow cartographers,

I decided to try digital art again and bought myself a Wacom Inutos drawing tablet (small) to turn some of my current free time into mapmaking time! Pen and paper is nice and all, but digital art has its perks, which I hope to profit from.

Well, to start trying out the tablet, I will draw a simple regional map. Not only that, I added some personal challenges such as "coloring", which I have been terrible at so far. This WIP is about that. Critiques and advice are welcome, specially regarding tablet use. As for software, I am using the "Corel Painter Essentials 7" that I got with the tablet and turned out much better than I expected by the way.

Below are my very first scratches as a rough draft of my plans, a coast with three rivers, some forest and mountains at the back. Additionally, a "knot-like" border to be refined later on.

Best,

[Beoner]

This is an updated version after working out with the tablet for a while.

Turns out drawing without looking at my hand is much harder than I expected, but after some time practicing I think I got it working reasonably well.

I decided to add a lake in the mountain range together with a big forest going all the way back. I am not really happy with the river from this lake, but I will refine it later.

[KMAlexander]

This is coming right along! Looking forward to following its progression.

[Mapsburgh]

My general advice on digital drawing: layers, layers, layers. Put everything in a separate layer so you can edit and revise it easily.

Specific to your map, I think the river coming out of the lake would look better if it had a few zig-zags to it, to make it look like it's working its way through the ridges of the mountains. The mountain ridges running perpendicular to the river are what are holding back the lake from totally draining, after all.

[Beoner]

Thanks for the interest KMAlexander, and thanks for the tips Mapsburgh, though I do have to say I quickly get lost with many layers

Well, it has been a crazy week, but I manage to make some progress on this map. I added a few curves to the river coming out of the lake, trying to use the mountain shape as barrier for its flow, so hopefully it looks reasonably natural.
Finished defining the coastlines and forests. Finally, I adventured into coloring, which went a little better than expected. I think that pine forests (darker) look good so far, while the "regular" trees (lighter) are a bit too shiny, I guess I should have tried some darker color for that.
Nonetheless, my greatest concern remains on the mountains, which look bad. I think it is due to both the color choice, which I though would look better, and the lack of details, such as shadowing, but then I have no idea what I will be doing with them from now on. Not sure I will manage to pull this style off with good colors.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a tutorial on coloring this kind of map?

[Dimension Door]

Hey Beoner, when I watched this video from fantastic maps I felt I learned something valuable when working with color and shading on a digital map. I hope you’ll find it useful as well.