WIP - Freehand mountains

[Wingshaw]

Also agree with Deadshade. That's something I wouldn't have noticed, but once it is pointed out, it does stand out a bit.

The other thing - and this might be a matter of taste - I would consider making them look more rugged. I think the key to doing that is in lights and shadows, and the lesser ridge lines. Your mountains are quite elegant and can give your map a nicecstylised look (and this is why I say it is a matter of style), but if you want less stylised/more realistic, then they need to look a bit messier. I checked out the Alphonso Dunn video that Scrit supplied, and while I don't completely agree with Dunn's approach, it nonetheless can offer good insight into drawing realistic mountains.

Definitely getting better, though.

THW

[Ascension]

One thing to keep in mind is - scale. Drawing bigger mountains makes it go faster and cover large areas but that might not be a good thing. You need more detail on big mountains and you can get bogged down and be drawing cracks for a week. Dead space can be your friend - you can put text there or fill it with trees or hills or grass or little monsters or mini-buildings or shields or roads or symbols for things like caves or whatever. Of course doing small mountains means you have to draw more of them but they don't have to be as detailed.

[Chick]

This is the other side of the map I'm working on, a smaller area of mountains. I wanted to start over from scratch and try more of these ideas, including more shading and lighting to make the mountains look more rugged. I know this is pathetic, but I'd still love to hear more about techniques for doing this better. I've looked at a lot of fine maps with really nice mountains, I just don't know how to get there yet.

There is one important thing I've learned about making maps more quickly -- don't do mountains.

Freehand Mountains 03.jpg

[Wingshaw]

Another nice set, Cornelia. You've got some really interesting and appealing effects, there. I think I like this picture the most, so far. Perhaps if your black outlines were made less stark (i.e. just lower the opacity by 5-10%)

Do you ever draw with just pen and paper? I find it the best way to give a rugged look, because you can be much looser with a pencil/pen than with a mouse (I have no idea what drawing with a tablet is like). At the very least, it can supply good practice, and chances to explore and experiment. And it's fairly quick, cheap, and easy.

THW

[Chick]

The mountain outlines are not black, they are actually a dark brown, but since they are on their own layer, it's easy to make them less opaque. This is with that layer opacity reduced to 80%. Does it look better to you?

Freehand Mountains 04.jpg

As for drawing with a pen, I flunked Crayons 101 in the 3rd grade and haven't picked up a drawing pen since. Probably never will. If you had asked me 10 years ago, "What is the very last thing in life you will ever be?", I would have told you "an artist". My background is math. Then one day I discovered fractals and within a couple of years, to my immense surprise, I found myself being called an artist. To this day, that still boggles my mind.

That's why this freehand drawing, even with a tablet/pen or with a mouse, is so terribly hard for me

[Scrit]

There is nothing pathetic about wanting to improve your skills. Your mountains are coming along quite nicely.

[Chick]

There is nothing pathetic about wanting to improve your skills. Your mountains are coming along quite nicely.

LOL Thanks for the encouragement! It's not the desire to improve that's pathetic, just my starting place

[Korash]

lo thar chick, I like the progress you are making. one suggestion that I would add would be to try varying the angle of the ridges a bit from the vertical.

as for your starting point, We ALL started at the same point....the beginning ;-)

Sent from my GT-S5830D using Tapatalk 2

[Deadshade]

Very good !
Almost all the mountains taken individually are nice even if they all have a similar prismatic shape with the same orientation (crest along N-S line, smaller prism face towards S, larger prism face towards N). Also their heights are more variable now.

I think the next step is to get from nicely drawn individual mountains to a mountain range where the mountains must connect to each other.
The point being that the mountains don't go all the way to the sea level between 2 peaks but rather gradually get higher and higher then again lower and lower when you travel along the range's orientation.

Here is what I mean :

Man on hills.jpg

On this picture you don't see A mountain. You see rugged high ground from which emerge higher peaks here and there.

Range.png

On this superfast sketch you see what I meant in the previous post. The height increases gradually from left to right and the crest(s) are going in different orientations (not a regular prism).

However as Hoarsewhisperer already mentionned, this is a style question. For a symbolical semi realistic style you are almost there with your last attempt.
If you want to get more realistic, you'll have to think more in range terms and not so much in individual mountain terms.

[Chick]

Deadshade, that is a beautiful sketch, and I wish I could draw like that, but after flunking Crayons 101, I will never get there. I don't have the talent nor the ability to visualize such a drawing as I go. For me, it's all about logic, and where should the lines be drawn, not about feeling how the picture should look.

I'm sure everyone is different, and I don't think that I want to try for this kind of realism simply because I will never match someone who can draw like this. I do like the mapping part, not the art part of cartography, so my best plan is to get good attractive stylized mountains, not realistic ones.

To that end, one thing that would help me is to know your process. Do you start with the mountains in the back or in the front of the picture? Or for that matter, the middle or one side? Do you draw the ridgelines for the entire picture, then go back and fill in details, or do you do each one before moving on to the next?