New to GIMP: borders, roads...

[Elterio Delgard]

Hello! I have been away from my projects for a while with work but today I have a day off and I am working on my Kastosian map (yet again I know) on GIMP. I hope to sketch the network of roads and to draw the borders. I still have a hard time so any kind of help on how to draw such things with GIMP would be appreciated.

Oh! And is there a way to make custom icons on gimp? I would like to have a standard way to represent villages, towns, castles and so on.

[Abu Lafia]

Hi Elterio Delgard, first of all, yes, it's totally possible to do all these things in gimp! To help you further, it would be great to know, what sort of roads, borders or icons you want to make for your map. I guess it's for your project merging and redoing the six maps of yours? (i haven't commented on them yet, but i really like them a lot! )
The roads i made for some of my maps where just made with a hard round brush with the spacing set to ~200. It's a pretty simple way to do this. For borders you could do something similar, or work with paths in gimp. You can stroke the paths with different line styles (..... or ----- or - - - - or --- --- --- )

[Elterio Delgard]

Mmmm So far I have been doing the roads wiht the .....
Probably for borders I will have to either thicken it or change it wiht _._._._.
The annoying part is that I am only doing a sketch right now with just one type of road. After I am done I will be redoing it with several types of road (military patrol, simple roads, main roads, pilgrimage)
I have not yet pondered on how I will do the bridges, but that will have to wait for I must decide how the Imperial power (or simply the Emperor's court) will regulate the bridges.
I should be done soon with the first sketch.

[Abu Lafia]

Since you can make your own brushes in gimp, you could make different brushes for different sorts of roads later on...or just vary the size (color? or is it bw?) of the dots.
For the icons, Jared Blando has a chapter bout it in his book "How to Draw Fantasy Art and RPG Maps" which is really good (and worth the money). In my view Sapiento brought this style of city icons to a whole new level in his maps (like here). Or you could take inspiration from many other maps here at the Guild or around the web. If you're having specific technical issues with gimp on how to do these, just say it, i'd love to help if i can!

[Elterio Delgard]

Mmmmm... Thanks for the tip! Will certainly look at that book you are talking of. Concerning colours, right now it is black and white with some grey. I am thinking of maybe adding a dark Brown when I will redraw again (already things I plan to change on my style, like adding cliffs, bushlands, fissures, grass texture).