Del's Doodles

[Badger]

The shadows really make things pop I think and are well worth taking the extra time to do.

Anyway I think it looks good although I tend not to favour such heavily saturated colours. But that's more personal preference.

An easy method to do shadows that I use is to do them on their own layer. So you have you land/grass colour on one layer, and all your structures and building colour on another layer. In between, just paint in the shadows in solid black. Then simply lower the opacity of the shadow layer to make them as dark or light as you like.

Ya, putting all those little things into a map like that is what takes time, but what also makes it worth it. I'm technically colorblind, not fully.. I can see most colors, but I have a tendency to misinterpret colors when they get too muted (I guess you might say).. I will easily get lightly shaded greens or blues mistaken with grey's and purples... it's annoying. But I'm just basically taking the colors on CS out for a spin. That is exactly how I did my drop shadows for this map, since CS doesn't have a drop shadow effect like PS does (or if it does, I haven't found it yet). I used an airbrush in full black and turned down the opacity of the layer. I think you get more control out of your shadows that way.

I'll be done with a castle doodle soon, I hope. Taking more time than I wanted too on it.

Del