Dec '20/ Jan '21 Lite Challenge: The Monolith of Heatheim

[wminish]

For this months' lite challenge I decided to do a town map as I haven't done one in a while (although with some extra details around the outside). I settled on an idea I had a while ago for a fantasy town built in and around a futuristic alien monolith. This will also be my first go at using ink dip pens for mapping (my wife got me a set for Christmas) and I'm quite pleased with how it is coming along so far.

### Latest WIP ###
progress1.jpeg

[Bogie]

Welcome to the Challenge WMinish! The penwork looks great.

[wminish]

I sat down and got the town itself inked in. Now I just need to add the town name in the space I've left at the bottom and then get to the colouring.

### Latest WIP ###
progress2.jpeg

[RenflowerGrapx]

Omg I love this one so so so much!
Balance, contrast, composition.. Lovely!

[wminish]

Omg I love this one so so so much!
Balance, contrast, composition.. Lovely!

Thanks Renflower, I really appreciate it.

Here is the latest update, I've now done the title of the main map and started the colouring.

### Latest WIP ###
progress3.jpeg

[wminish]

Here's some further progress from the last day or so. Most of the main map is now coloured (just a few large areas of trees to go), after that its just the border details to finish off.

### Latest WIP ###
progress4.jpeg

[wminish]

I think I'm done now, I thought about adding detail under the map to make the whole setup look like it was sitting on a wooden table or something but I think I'm happy with it as is.

### Latest WIP ###
progress6.jpeg

[Bogie]

Looks terrific! Great job with the coloring!

[Arimel]

That map looks terrific. I like the note/folded map on the side. If I may, what did you use to do the coloring? Was it digital or by hand?

[wminish]

If I may, what did you use to do the coloring? Was it digital or by hand?

Hi Arimel. The colouring for this map was all done by hand with colouring pencils (specifically a mix of Faber-Castell classic colours and polychromos). I was pretty much using the same colour palette as for all my other maps although on this one I was using ink dip pens for the first time. I've also moved to a new type of paper (200gsm watercolour paper), this seemed to make a huge difference to the overall look as the paper has much better colour pickup than the paper that I was using. After scanning in I also tweaked the contrast and colour saturation a little bit to account for how my scanner seems to wash out the image a little bit.