WIP: Cathedral by the Sea

[woopingwooper]

Very much a work in progress, this is my second map and is intended to be primarily a way of practicing a little bit of everything. It's got cliffs, trees, grass, rocks, varying elevations in the ocean, etc. It's also my first foray into drawing buildings, so I'm trying a couple of types, from the really simple, to the curved cathedral, to an oddly-shaped multi-storied building. It was supposed to be a very quick sketch, so overall it's a pretty simple map.

I ended up spending most of my evening playing with water textures. So far I only have a very sketchy representation of the town (or rather, huddle of buildings) itself. Since this was originally supposed to be a two-hour sketch for practice, the town doesn't make much sense - how in the world an island could support itself with one little farm and a single well is pretty much beyond me, but perhaps the church ships in supplies each week.

Anyways, I'll work on this some more throughout the week. Any feedback is welcome, especially harsh criticism!

Island Church 1.jpg

Things I learned today: composition really matters. I had inked in my coastline and was playing with the trees before I realized that the curved shape of the island was just BEGGING for something to be to its south-east. I ended up adding a sort of barrier reef thing, but it doesn't quite work with the island's coast... In the future, I should probably plan more before I start drawing!

[woopingwooper]

Today's lesson: Color is hard. I messed around with grass and improving the ocean for a few hours, but I am thoroughly dissatisfied with the results. Right now everything is a nasty neon except for the buildings. I'll come back to work on this more later. I still need to actually add detail to the cathedral, finish the little farm thing, color and shade the cliffs, color and shade the trees, and fix... Everything, really. Ah well, this is what a learning process is all about!

Island Church 2.jpg

[Solice]

Exactly! The learning process is all about making mistakes and trial and error. However, I find it 10x more fun when you have other people to confer with and bounce ideas off of. (Perhaps thats just me though.) I like the way this looks for a rough stage. You've told us what you worked on and I think it looks phenomenal. But since you are working on color, have you tried some more saturated/full colors? Perhaps some hex codes will help you?

I'll toss a green, gray, and blue your way. I particularly like them.
405018 - A Dark "Moist" Green
999b95 - A neutral Gray I call " Cold Rock "
6ea0c8 - The water color from Ascension's tutorial

[Larb]

Often when it comes to colouring it is your canvas colour that makes a big difference. One of the best things I learned when first doing digital art was not to use a white canvas. Use a midtone. For a map a desaturated green colour often helps I find. For something predominantly ocean maybe a blue colour in the mid-light range might work better.

[woopingwooper]

Thanks for the comments, guys. You're right, it is more fun practicing when you can share it with other people!

I ended up ditching most of my color and ocean detail. They were a valuable experiment, but they just didn't work. I slightly improved my bay area, and it ended up looking nicer than the rest of my island. I'm probably going to have to add more detail to the whole island coast to make it look as nice! I also added detail to the temple, heavily inspired from another map on here. I tried to find it again just now to give credit but I can't remember the name. I'll find it eventually... Finally, I shaded a lot of stuff in prep for re-coloring.

Todays lesson(s): First, I can't copy buildings of other artists forever. I should start looking for reference images of real stuff when drawing buildings, I guess. Also, shading consistently is hard! The light is supposed to be coming form the top-left, but the shading is a little bit varied. It's tricky to do right. Still, I'm pretty happy with how it came out. More stuff to think about and practice in the future, wheeee!

Island Church 3.jpg

[Wolram]

Oooh that colouring is nice! I love the way you've done the trees. The shading on that dome is also cool. I think you were right to get rid of your original colours, this has a much gentler feel to it

[woopingwooper]

Thanks for the compliment! Those neon colors were really bugging me, so it's nice to have some external validation on my improved color choice and shading

Now I'm really starting to get somewhere with this map. First thing was first today: color. I couldn't bring myself to leave it as that off-white color forever, so I started by going over the ocean with a nice, deep blue. That didn't really look very good until I went to town with shading in an overlay, making the clear transition from shallow to deep. Adding waves/ripples also added quite a bit to the overall effect. I'm pretty happy with how the water turned out, but this is all a learning process, and what I'm happy with today might look awful tomorrow. What do you guys think of the water?

Next was coloring the grass and cliffs. The grass was easy but time consuming - I ended up using a "normal" blending layer with a nearly opaque green, unlike my usual strategy of using a "color" blending layer and building up low opacity strokes. Trying to make sure it didn't bleed into the trees was a pain, and I also had to carefully reduce a lot of shading I had done previously. The cliffs were much easier to manage, since the pre-existing shading worked very well with the grays I added.

I ended up keeping the forests a kind of gold-brown color. I'm trying to evoke a feeling of autumn, although I think it might need some more red in there. Do you guys think the trees look good as is? Any tips for doing autumn color trees?

During hours of fairly mindless coloring I had lots of time to think about the story of this island, so I came to the decision that it is eternally early autumn here. I'm considering naming it Gold Leaf Isle in honor of these trees.

Anyways, the rest is pretty simple. Colored the dome, the well, added a pier, colored the gravestones, did some minor shading... I've still got a huge amount of polishing to do, including the farm area, the pathways, adding more small features like rocks, and figuring out what kind of border I might want for the map. I've never done a border before, so I'm not sure how to start with that... Anyways, I can see the ending!

Today's biggest lesson: Choosing colors is hard. I should look into color theory some more.

Island Church 4.jpg

[snodsy]

Really nice job, J. Edwards would be proud. One comment, the outline of the land/green could maybe be a little lighter/thinner? maple even an inner glow of a slightly lighter green to highlight the leading edge (northwest) making the land have a little more volume, just a thought. Like the cemetery. Few more roof lines on the large house? Trees awesome! Too bad these people don't have a boat or maybe they are just away on holiday.

[HannahLiesmith]

Hardly an expert, but I do know autumn colors and such; try a dark red in some places in the trees, underneath the colors you already have (you don't want it to be too saturated with the red). I live in a place with really vivid autumns, so things that tend to show up: browns, golds, and reds are always around, but the red is actually not as predominant as people might think. Try for something...subdued, I guess?

And try adding a little bit of the tree color to the grass (not anything to do with the trees themselves, it just occurred to me that that might give it a bit more of that autumn feel than just having the trees would--and I kinda want to see what it looks like)

This is a really cool little map, I'd love to hear some more of the story behind it!

[Meshon]

Too bad these people don't have a boat or maybe they are just away on holiday.

I think they are fishing. They probably go fishing all the time. A small herb garden out back of the house would help to spice up the fish and tuber stew that I'm imagining is the culinary specialty of this place.

This is a really nice looking map. I just realized, it's funny, but when I see a map of a nice, pleasant looking place I immediately start looking for the dark side. What's under the cemetery? Do the inhabitants practice strange rites calling up monstrous beings from beneath the waves?

Wait, they live lives of quiet devotion and go fishing a lot? Whoa! Mind... blown...

cheers,
Meshon