tips needed on handmade wooded hills

[mystic badger]

Hello,
after a long pause, I'm back to making handmade maps. I'm currently thinking about a regional map with many valleys and hills. I would like to have wooded hills. How could I represent them ? I thought about colors, but I'd like to make white/black maps.

Any hints, suggestions or examples ?

[Mouse]

If you are going to use hill shading to show the relief, then I would simply put the shading on the map right over the top of the trees. That way they become part of the hill

[mystic badger]

It could work, but what about the unshaded hillside ? Or with juste a few trees....

[Mouse]

Sorry Mystic Badger - I'm not really understanding the problem there. If the hillside is lit, then the trees will also be lit

There are two types of shading involved here - the relief shading, and the lesser shading (less intense) that you would use to give the copses of trees their 3D shape and form. Where you have the form shading on the trees and the trees themselves are shaded by the relief shading, the darkest part of the shading will be where the tree shading and the relief shading coincide.

I hope that makes sense?

[Chashio]

Add thought: how you portray it also depends on the medium you're planning to use. An ink pen generally means full black+white, vs. pencil/graphite or watercolor/brushed ink where you can show a range of values in greyscale. Either way, you basically need to change the value to create contrast between your wooded areas and other, so that they're legible on the map.

Try checking out shaded relief maps online, as Mouse suggests, though many of those add forests with color tints because changing the value would change the terrain. Also check out panoramic and bird-eye-view maps, as those will give you a different angle to look at.

If you have a program that can convert images to greyscale/black+white, do that with a bunch of maps, or even aerial photos, and see what happens to them and how you might be able to show the difference clearly in your own pictures. Also look at artist renderings of landscapes.

Depending on the style and medium you're looking to do, there are many ways to go about it but a big thing without having color to lean on is going to be contrast in values. For instance, you could make the trees/forests have a darker local/natural value than grasslands, and then add terrain shading as Mouse said. If you're working in strict black and white, that would mean making the shaded area darker with more ink strokes and less visible areas of paper. If you're using a greyscale medium, you can 'layer' the shading so there are lighter greys and darker.

Not sure if that really helps at all, but there you go.

[Mouse]

Well it was a lot clearer than my suggestion! LOL!

[mystic badger]

Thanks for the suggestions, I will try and see how it renders.