WIP - Avearia - Looking for feedback

[xpian]

For the kind of mountains and hills that they are, they seem fine to me. Of course, there's always more you can do, and different techniques you can use. Sometimes, on some maps, you finish a terrain feature and move on. Maybe you move on because it's too much work to keep messing around with it. Maybe you move on because you've reached, for the moment, your level of skill and need some more personal development time before you'll be able to make something better. I think we've all been there.

If you were going to do more to the mountains, you could...
1) Give them sharper, more intense shadows and highlights. Especially at the tops...the shadow and highlight should both be most intense near the peak, which doesn't really seem to be the case for most of your mtns here.
or
2) Make them blend into the terrain more, with little contour lines or with patches of shadow and highlight that blend the bases of the mountains into the surrounding terrain.
or
3) Do the "connected mountain ranges" thing. You don't have to go nuts and connect them all...you could pick some peaks here and there and draw the connecting ridges in between. There are lots of decent tutorials for how to do this in many places. I just recently posted a bunch of mountain drawing tutorials over in that forum.
or
4) Pick some tall peaks to put some snow caps on
or
5) Weave your rivers into your mountains to a much greater degree, winding the streams around the bases of the peaks and creating that "embrace" between the flowing water and the elevated land it flows from

Or any combination of the above...

[kacey]

For the kind of mountains and hills that they are, they seem fine to me. Of course, there's always more you can do, and different techniques you can use. Sometimes, on some maps, you finish a terrain feature and move on. Maybe you move on because it's too much work to keep messing around with it. Maybe you move on because you've reached, for the moment, your level of skill and need some more personal development time before you'll be able to make something better. I think we've all been there.

If you were going to do more to the mountains, you could...
1) Give them sharper, more intense shadows and highlights. Especially at the tops...the shadow and highlight should both be most intense near the peak, which doesn't really seem to be the case for most of your mtns here.
or
2) Make them blend into the terrain more, with little contour lines or with patches of shadow and highlight that blend the bases of the mountains into the surrounding terrain.
or
3) Do the "connected mountain ranges" thing. You don't have to go nuts and connect them all...you could pick some peaks here and there and draw the connecting ridges in between. There are lots of decent tutorials for how to do this in many places. I just recently posted a bunch of mountain drawing tutorials over in that forum.
or
4) Pick some tall peaks to put some snow caps on
or
5) Weave your rivers into your mountains to a much greater degree, winding the streams around the bases of the peaks and creating that "embrace" between the flowing water and the elevated land it flows from

Or any combination of the above...

Thanx xpian, I really appreciate the detailed response, especially coming from someone like you, I've seen, and admired you’re maps so really value you’re opinions.

I definitely have planned to intensify the shadow, and highlights I just wanted to get all the mountains in place first so I can do it all in one pass. And I'll be trying all you’re other suggestions for sure, except maybe connecting the peaks, Deadshade has also suggested this but I'm torn on it.

Thanx again for the feedback, I really do appreciate it.

[kacey]

I was getting frustrated with the mountains so moved on to try and experiment with some rivers, which I've never really done before.

Just a quick question... I've done them in a dark grey blue which I sampled from the ocean like Max suggested, but I'm unsure of weather to do the outlines of the lakes the same colour as the dark brown coastal outline, or doing them the same colour as the rivers.

I've started off this one lake with the coastal outline colour...Do you guy's think I should change it to the river colour? I'm also wondering if the line weight, thickness, and tapering is OK???

I've never done rivers like this before, so I really don't know what I'm doing.

Avearia WIP river test.png

[Deadshade]

The rivers look OK. River colors are generally chosen to be the same (or very close) color as the ocean. The lake looks OK too.
Basically the rivers flow from the mountains toward the sea and wiggle around while doing it - not much more to add.
Of course your fjord makes the connection look strange to my eye because one doesn't see where the river ends and where the fjord begins.
Especially because fjords are surrounded by cliffs but here the river flows in at sea level. But these are just details.

[Ilanthar]

Your rivers are good if you ask me, using a derivative color from the sea is a good suggestion. And honestly, I really like your mountains as they are. Why are you frustrated with it?

[kacey]

The rivers look OK. River colors are generally chosen to be the same (or very close) color as the ocean. The lake looks OK too.
Basically the rivers flow from the mountains toward the sea and wiggle around while doing it - not much more to add.
Of course your fjord makes the connection look strange to my eye because one doesn't see where the river ends and where the fjord begins.
Especially because fjords are surrounded by cliffs but here the river flows in at sea level. But these are just details.

Thanx Deadshade, I see what you mean about the connection between the river, and fjords. I'm actually reconsidering even leaving them as fjords because I don't know how to make them look like they have cliffs. I was wondering if maybe they could just be big river channels or something, I'm actually a little bothered by the connection myself, I'm just not yet sure what to do about it.

[kacey]

Your rivers are good if you ask me, using a derivative color from the sea is a good suggestion. And honestly, I really like your mountains as they are. Why are you frustrated with it?

Thanx Ilanthar, you made me feel a little better about it. I guess I'm getting frustrated because the picture I envision in my head is much different then I'm able to get down in reality. I think I'm overly critical of myself, and maybe over estimating what I should be able to do as a beginner. I understand that it takes time, and practice to learn a craft, I'm just growing impatient with the process. I want things to be perfect from the start, but in reality I need to do much more practice for that to happen.

[kacey]

I won't be able to work on this map for a little while because I dropped my pressure sensitive stylus on the floor the other day, argh! And royally screwed it up. It only draws dotted lines now... So frustrating. What makes it worse is I can't get a replacement for it in my town, so I have to order one online. So if I don't do any updates for the next little while it's not because I gave up, it's just that I'm waiting on a new stylus.

[kacey]

I decided to expand this map by including it's surrounding territories, and nations to get a better sense of it's history.

The original coast line is in the top left corner.

I completely redid the border, worked on the texture, and removed the big crack like fjords which were bugging me before.

I decided to keep the mountains outline I already had, so just moved them over, and fiddled with them a bit. I might still add a few more, and some hills, and I still have to colour, and shade them in, but I'll probably get some rivers established first.

I lost allot of image quality reducing the size to post this.

Still allot of work to do.

unexplored lands WIP.png

[Ilanthar]

The frame is original and very well done, it fits the rest of the map very well.