"The Spider's Nest" - inked-in WIP

[jfrazierjr]

Do you have all of your lineart on a single layer? If so, that is one thing I would HIGHLY suggest from a workflow perspective is to seperate everything as long as your machine has the ram to handle the image.

In your case, I would have, at a MINIMUM, layers for:

• land outline
• mountains line art
• waves
• forests

Then, anytime you make a selection for some reason, I almost always create a channel and/or a layer mask based upon such(depending on what I expect to do). The problem with putting it all on a single layer is that if you need to put a small blur on the outline of the island(for example), you then put that blur on all of the other line art which you don't want to do for the mountains and forest shapes(most likely anyway).

You have much of it already done, so you don't have to "redo" it all from scratch, what I would do is make use of some selections to create layer masks and the duplicate your line art later several times, changing the layer mask as needed. For example, your waves layer should be masked to the outermost shape of the island because you will never have waves INSIDE your island shape itself. Trust me, this keeps you from "accidents" that you don't see for days or weeks if you learn to use layer masks liberally(experience talking here).

[Chris Lewis]

You have a strong contrast between the land (bright) and the sea. Not a real problem, but it's really drawing your attention to the land, imo.
Your coastline looks a bit pixellated, maybe a "blur" filter could change that. I tend to not use pure black/white, and I think your coastline and ripples are too b/w. You can just play with opacity to correct that anyway, just as you mentionned.
Don't hesitate to play with opacity/layer effects. Sometimes, you just turn something good into something really great just by playing with your different layers settings .
Keep up the tests & tries, I'm confident you'll come with an excellent map .

Thank you for your input, Ilanthar! I will work on incorporating these tweaks into my next iteration.

Looks like you have come a long way with Abu's help, Chris

Have you tried experimenting with changing the mode of each layer yet? Its the drop down box just above the opacity setting. Overlay and multiply seem to be about the most useful.

I know you want to emulate the work of others, but you will develop your own style in time, and I like your ocean

EDIT: ninjad by Ilanthar! LOL!

Thank you, Mouse! Yes for each "Shallow Water" layer I put over the ocean, I went through ALL the modes to see what each did. I also adjusted the Opacity for each layer. That took some time but I think it was worth it. Some modes seemed to make a world of difference, and some didn't seem to do anything (to my untrained eye) I also changed the brush size, opacity, and style on each layer. I wanted to find one brush to use as Abu described but it seemed I needed to use several different brushes to achieve an effect similar to his.

Hey Chris, i'm glad to see this turned out so well! I can only wholeheartedly agree with Ilanthar and Mouse here and the great suggestions they made. I also would love to see the white coastal wavelines' layer set to overlay. Btw. i don't think they look horrible at all, but you also could "Filter>Blur" them for example, as Ilanthar suggested for the coastline.
The "smoothness" and blending of the layered brushstrokes also depends on the background texture and colour i think. The blue of your sea looks more saturated than on my example and the parchment texture you used is richer in contrast. I think this might have an effect on making the individual iterations of brushstrokes stand out more.
Ofc, using other brushes might be a good solution too. Not sure if you used the one shown in my screenshot (Acrylic 04#2). It is in the basic set and comes closest to the desired effect in my view. When doing this i searched the web to provide a link to the brush(set) i prefer for texturing but couldn't find it anymore. I can send you the brushfiles directly if you like.
I still haven't come to grips myself with the whole channel functions in gimp. For now i could do all my colouring work without using them, but i look forward to learning more about it from you in the future!

Keep on fiddling with all the settings and experiment a lot! As Ilanthar rightly said, sometimes a slight tuning has a huge effect, and i consider Ilanthar a grand-maître of this subtle magic!

Thank you for your reassurance, Abu I'll need to keep tweaking the layers to achieve the look you did and yes that makes sense about the parchment texture having an effect on the brushstrokes - I'll keep that in mind. As far as the brush, yes I started out using the same brush (Acrylic 04) but felt I had to use more "grungier" brushes to achieve a look that blended each stroke rather than leaving lines. I will search the GIMP add-on directory to see I can find an grungy brushes but yes, if and when you have time, I'd love to experiment with the brushes you used, if you could send them. For the channels, since you told me to use one for land, I experimented with using one for the 3 patches of vegetation. It seems that when you create a channel and then select it, it allows you to create a base layer color rather easily using the Bucket Fill tool, especially if you have several items created in that channel (e.g., the three forests). I think this is particularly useful when you have more than one item you're coloring and it keeps the base color consistent, and uses less mouse clicks

Do you have all of your lineart on a single layer? If so, that is one thing I would HIGHLY suggest from a workflow perspective is to seperate everything as long as your machine has the ram to handle the image.

In your case, I would have, at a MINIMUM, layers for:

• land outline
• mountains line art
• waves
• forests

Then, anytime you make a selection for some reason, I almost always create a channel and/or a layer mask based upon such(depending on what I expect to do). The problem with putting it all on a single layer is that if you need to put a small blur on the outline of the island(for example), you then put that blur on all of the other line art which you don't want to do for the mountains and forest shapes(most likely anyway).

You have much of it already done, so you don't have to "redo" it all from scratch, what I would do is make use of some selections to create layer masks and the duplicate your line art later several times, changing the layer mask as needed. For example, your waves layer should be masked to the outermost shape of the island because you will never have waves INSIDE your island shape itself. Trust me, this keeps you from "accidents" that you don't see for days or weeks if you learn to use layer masks liberally(experience talking here).

Thank you for the pointers, jfrazierjr. Yes, I have most of my linework on one layer. I did separate the coastal waves from the land though so this is something I will definitely work on in the future. I used layers on my last iteration and will certainly incorporate the use of them more as I progress. I'll try going back and duplicating/layering the linework layer so I can add that blur effect that Ilanthar mentioned above. Thank you for the reminder to use layers. I appreciate it.