The Land - Child of Dragons (commission)

[Mouse]

I am so not looking forward to having to draw forests by hand! LOL!

Nice map, Meshon

[Meshon]

I am so not looking forward to having to draw forests by hand! LOL!

Nice map, Meshon

Thank you. I have to say, drawing forests combines a sense of existential uncertainty with a great deal of satisfaction. It's like a two-edged sword. Made of wood. With needles.

Here's me partway through the outlining of the forest area.
The-Land-forestBegins.jpg

Soon I should get to that part Diamond was talking about…

cheers,
meshon

Edit: I meant to note, the biggest challenge so far has been maintaining the scale, partly because I'm working zoomed in to 800% so it's hard to reference the size of trees from my previous drawings. Also because the trees along the lower edge are complete, while the ones on the upper edge are just the tops. I've erased a couple sections to redraw already.

[Mouse]

Would it help to paste a copy of an existing tree near where you are working (to be later erased) to act a as a reference?

[Warlin]

Hey, Meshon, I love the way you drawn your mountain and the trees. If I may suggest, I try this style myself and find that the result is too blubby with all the trees drawn individually in the forest. But with only the trees in the border and some top trees in the middle, it could be fine. Do you plan to do it purely B&W or in grey scale ? If B&W, some hatching for each trees could make them lest flat individually.
You have there a great start .

[Meshon]

Would it help to paste a copy of an existing tree near where you are working (to be later erased) to act a as a reference?

Yes, yes it would. Thanks so much for that suggestion!

Hey, Meshon, I love the way you drawn your mountain and the trees. If I may suggest, I try this style myself and find that the result is too blubby with all the trees drawn individually in the forest. But with only the trees in the border and some top trees in the middle, it could be fine. Do you plan to do it purely B&W or in grey scale ? If B&W, some hatching for each trees could make them lest flat individually.
You have there a great start .

Thank you. That's a good idea, I haven't fully decided if it's just going to be B&W or not. Some kind of shading to the trees is a good idea. I'm planning to make the outlines of the area with lots of trees and then fill in the interior with suggestions of trees and texture and a fair bit of, well, "white space" I'll see how it looks in a bit. I tried a few things out that were more dense, but they tended to be really heavy on the map.

Time to draw some more trees…

cheers,
Meshon

[Diamond]

Would it help to paste a copy of an existing tree near where you are working (to be later erased) to act a as a reference?

That is a genius idea. I'll come back and rep you for it when the !&$% site lets me.

[Bogie]

Looking good Meshon!

[Mouse]

Yes, yes it would. Thanks so much for that suggestion!

cheers,
Meshon

You're welcome If that doesn't work to well for you other options are to open more than one view (CC3 and Blender allow this, but I don't know if PS or GIMP do), or to save a temporary copy of the current version under a different name and have that one open right next to the one you are working on - but if you do that you have to be careful that both are zoomed to the same magnification while you work on the current file, and make sure that you don't get confused about which is which and start drawing in the temp file instead

That is a genius idea. I'll come back and rep you for it when the !&$% site lets me.

Thanks Diamond

[Meshon]

So I was about to start on the forest fill when I realized I'd need to know where the locations and their labels were going to fit. So that's all done now… The Land has been settled! Each of the places has a slightly different character in the novel, so I tried to represent that with varied building styles.

The-Land-settled.jpg

Coming up I'll be figuring out how I want to represent the remaining terrain; grasslands, badlands, and desert!

Let me know what you think, critique is most welcome.

Thanks for looking!
Meshon

[Mouse]

Please don't take this the wrong way!

I'm thinking that the map is excellent, but the ivy leaf border is just a little bit wrong with it now that the forest meets it at the edges. Not sure why, but it just looks a bit... strange?

EDIT: Maybe a single path of ivy leaves that are fractionally larger/drawn with slightly thicker lines...

My bad if this is one of the commission specs!