Tectonics map of Maward

[Pixie]

Hand brainstorming, really, all of it. It helps to revisit the coastlines on and again instead of trying to accomplish a finished look at the first attempt. It also helps to work with a big file originally. Knowing the tectonics of your continent is definitely a good idea to make the coastline more realistic, as tectonics tells you natural places for peninsulas, smooth coasts, islands chains, inland seas, etc.
And finally, but probably more important than everything else, it helps to know Earth. I mean, staring at maps and google maps for ages seems like a pointless thing, but the back of your mind is storing references it will fetch later when is being creative.

[Naima]

Yeh , i am trying to generate a belieavable world similar to earth with fractal terrains , and in it i plement manually the few tidbits of memories of my old youth continent ... Cant seem to be able to paint in well details though because my original continent was around a sort of mediterranean sea , that on so large scale gets almoust dwarfed and the coastal details get lost ... At least cant seem to work proper ones manually in FT.

Btw in nature. Have u noticed how a boot like shape as Italy , new zealand or novaya zemlya is not so rare , but if we place in our world a shape resembling something in rl we peceive as a kind of mistake?

As for coastlines you used any tool for drawing coasts or just hand?

[Pixie]

I don't draw the coastlines until I need a "final look". I do what is normally recommended here at the guild. Land mass is a solid color area, in a separate layer. When you want to draw the coastline, select the area in the landmass layer, then go Selection-> Modify -> Border (a couple of pixels, depending on the size of your image), and finally fill that modified selection with another color on a separate layer.

Whenever you change the landmass, the coastline gets outdated and needs redoing, so don't get attached to that layer

[Naima]

I don't draw the coastlines until I need a "final look". I do what is normally recommended here at the guild. Land mass is a solid color area, in a separate layer. When you want to draw the coastline, select the area in the landmass layer, then go Selection-> Modify -> Border (a couple of pixels, depending on the size of your image), and finally fill that modified selection with another color on a separate layer.

Whenever you change the landmass, the coastline gets outdated and needs redoing, so don't get attached to that layer

Oh thankyou , But I mean the drawline borders , the roughed trait . the erratic in and outs of the coast shape ....