Boredom Country - Les Contrées de l'Ennui : the "stop messing around, dammit" post

[ThomasR]

Hello cartographer's,

Recently, I've been posting several hand drawn maps titled "Les Contrées de l'Ennui". For those of you that don't speak french, it means "Boredom Country".

In one of these posts, Ilanthar suggested that I connect these maps.

This morning, I drew another one ... Hi, my name is Thomas and I'm a cartography addict. So I put all these maps on a table and tried to arrange them in a coherent region and guess what, it works.

I've subsequently decided to follow Ilanthar's proposition and do the real Boredom Country.

I'll have to draw some more, draw something to fill the blanks but it won't be that difficult.

Here are the maps I've already drawn :

1- Carte conseil.jpeg 2- Contrées de l'ennui.jpg 3- Ennui 3.png

4- Ennui.jpg (I'll have to clean this one a little) and 5- Ennui 5.png

So, I'm gonna regroup the work I did and will do on this project in one post only, that's will be more simple. I probably won't keep the first one as it's a different ind of perspective, I'll see if it works.

[Warlin]

I find the last one more accomplished : there is less linedraws and the form are pure. Well done for this progression and a good idea to gather them in one thread .

[Ilanthar]

Excellent! Looking forward to see how you arrange those pretty maps. If you ever develop your RPG world, don't call it "Boredom RPG", just a thought .

[ThomasR]

Thanks Warlin and Ilanthar. I guess you're right, there's a style that's settling here. It's not only copying anymore. This thread won't be for any RPG (although I might be curious about a RPG named "Boredom"), just for pleasure and practice. I'm still not sure if I'll redraw everything digitally or just link the different places and color it. I'll see. At the moment, I'm grading baccalaureate papers and looking for a new apartment so, not much time left for drawing but I'll come back to it.

Thanks again for the kind words and encouragements guy !

[Josiah VE]

I love how you were able to fit these in pretty well together. I love seeing all these maps from you.

[ThomasR]

Thanks Josiah, I'll have to draw some more before the puzzle starts.

As this is meant as a workshop, here are some tests. I decided to keep a consistent coloring technique and specs so, them maps should be very similar. I might try some different things with color, inspired by what Tom did on his four season piece. Here, I worked on shading. Some mountains and the north-west river banks on the first one :

02-Contrées de l'ennui 1'.jpg

And all the mountains on the second :

Ennui 5-1.jpg

And a little bonus, the one I drew on craft paper, cleaned (sadly, it damaged a little bit the linework) and colored :

Ennui 4.jpg

As I upload the last two, I notice the blue is not grey enough to my taste and the green is too flashy. I'll have to fix this.

Please tell me what you think, especially about the shading. I smoothed it with the finger tool but if you notice something odd, do not hesitate, I'm a beginner shader.

Thomas

[J.Edward]

I meant to comment yesterday - this is nice stuff Thomas.
I posted it to the Guild FB page, if you hadn't seen that - it was well liked.
I think the color looks good.

[ThomasR]

Thanks J.Edwards and thanks for showing my work ! I'm a bit winded by the compliment. I do not own a Facebook account anymore so thanks for telling me.

I guess my linework is progressing, the coloring and shading skills too even if it's less regular. I'm comfortable with shading mountains (almost) and I'll be working on forests and rivers shading to give the impression of heights. It's a bit hard for me and despite many references taken on some wonderful maps posted here, I struggle with it but I hang tight !

You can expect at least one new map soon as I'll have some time on the train and another long and boring reunion ahead.

[snodsy]

Awesome job on these, it helps so much to do these practice maps. On the second map with the mountain down the middle your shading is really nice with the light highlights and dark ones, but sometimes I've added a really thin white highlight on just some of the peaks and it really pops the mountains. Not saying it really needs it, but might be something you play with. Great job love to see this progressing.

[ThomasR]

Thanks Snodsy ! Would you be so kind as to show me what you mean with the white highlight ?