Author drawing a map while world-building

[Ilgoth]

I figured that I need to blog, while I make the map. Mainly, as it seems by Facebook friends are getting fed up of my mapping statuses... ^^ So here I am!

I actually sketched part of the map and shared it here before;

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Right now I've been working on the full map, while my main concentration has been the world of my novel. If it matters, I'm writing dark fantasy. Last week I started to move my sketch to digital version, I use Adobe Photoshop to create the map and resolution is 5333 x 4000. I've done some digital art, and I think it will show on this too. I first create a greyscale version of the map, where I use lot of time to shadow elements to my taste. This way I can simply overlay some colors in, and play with different themes!

So here are some pictures what I got right now:

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Simple linework, which I did on top of the hand-drawn sketch. Fastly done for later guideline.

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The refined coastlines. I used lot of time with this, and I think this is version 4. I tried to keep the same style as in the hand-drawn version, because I really fell in love with that kind of touch. Obviously coastal effects I will add later on.

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Here I walk through the mountain layers, and how I construct them;
- linework layer
- two shadow layers, light and dark
- ground detail layer
- texture layer

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And all mountains done.

Nature is more powerful and 'aggressive' in my world. I have done this with sea and weather, so from there I kind of got into doing same with mountains. I originally drew them like this, then fixed for realism and then got back for world-building purposes. It felt right after giving it some time. Hopefully this don't put you off.

Tahl-Ulrun is the main continent, where the story builds up on. Actually, whole human society locates in the eastern part of it as western part is abandoned. Some generations ago, huge wave of sicknesses broke out and in the end this made people to travel and run towards the east, where dwarves lived. It didn't take long until war broke out where actually humans won, and dwarves got killed to extinct. Lot of details and reasons how this was possible, main thing being insane leadership of dwarves and the numbers. But yeah, in short the history why the world is in the shape it is.

Next thing I work on forests, in similiar way to the mountains. Will see what kind of texture I come up with.