Californio - WIP

[Cuin]

Hey all!

Any comments on this one?

There is a lot of text in some places and hard to squeeze it all in. Suggestions on that are particularly welcome.

Workflow for the map has been:
1) ink drawing of coast and mountains, with ink wash painted water lines
2) ink calligraphy on separate sheet of paper
3) scan both 1 n 2 and arrange appropriately, with fine tuning PS edits

Californio WIP copy.jpg

[Cuin]

Couldn't stop myself from going ahead and making some changes based on my own comments. Shrank some and emboldened others.
Californio WIP_V2 copy.jpg

[Cuin]

Also! I learned a new PS trick that is pretty great. When using burn and dodge changing between midtones, shadows, highlights to get the best effect. Keeping that one in the pocket!!

[Mapsburgh]

Looks good -- I always love a hand-drawn map. In your most recent version I think the tribe names are a little too bold -- they end up with really thick lines that contrast a lot with the thinner lines of larger labels like "Alta California." Also, I think the river names would look better if they were closer to the rivers.

[Cuin]

Thanks for the comments Mapsburgh. I think you're right about the too bold font. I'll try moving river names too, that wasn't anywhere near my radar.

[Cuin]

Ok. I decided to scrap much of the text and try again. On the initial versions (despite doing calligraphy on a separate sheet) I tried to get the text close to the actual size. Expressive calligraphy gets difficult at 12pt font! This round I did larger calligraphy and reduced the size digitally. Any new comments?
Californio WIP_V3 copy.jpg

[Mapsburgh]

Looking much better!