FINN City Map

[Bain]

I had to work for a while on this one. I wish the scanner could really get the detail right ( it's a little whited out in spots ). This City was needed to continue my campaign. I tried to put a lot of detail into it. Again all free hand. The Wood to the North is infested with Ogres. River traders constantly end there journey here before starting back south into more hospitable lands.

FINN.jpg

[Falconius]

Very nice city, I like the density levels because they are what I would actually expect to see for a large medieval city. Although I do think in the out lying farm areas there are too many proper buildings. Over all it is very nice. Well done. I especially like the field rows etc.

I take it this is in pencil? You might want to consider practicing inking things in. You could take a sheet of onion parer and tape it down on a surface over this drawing (don't tape it to the drawing itself put the drawing on a table and tape the onion sheet over it to the table) and practicing that way so you don't ruin what you have. Working with pen and ink also helps teach you other things about drawing that you won't learn with a pencil.

[Bain]

I tried to use ink before, unfortunately I can not find a fine enough pen for the detail ( I actually have done a lot of work with ink when I was still in school, for projects mostly buildings and such) . Most of my maps where done on regular weight printer paper. When I try to do the really fine detail ( such as the field rows ), it bleeds into each other. I only recently started using medium weight paper for them. I was thinking about using the Gimp program to re-do some of my maps, I found a link here at the guild for it and over the last 2 days have been playing around with it ( still trying to figure it out, and reading/watching tutorials on it ). After moving to a heavier weight paper I may try some with ink. I must say though, pencil and paper is my favorite medium to work in ( I draw more than just maps but I cant post them here Thanks for the constructive criticism Falconius, I am always looking to better my artistic abilities.

As for the density, I try to use the numbers, say your looking to draw a city of 3000 population (population is always important), I figure that should include the outlying buildings as well since most medieval cities taxed them as well and where else are the city folk going to get there food. I figure a medieval family is between 4-6 per household on average ( do to poor health, poor eating habits, and the many other hazards in a magical/medieval world families would naturally need to have more children) and thus each house is worth at least this amount of population. And how do you mean proper buildings in the outlying farm areas, if its a long established city wouldn't they be complete, and the uncompleted/ still being constructed outlying buildings/ new farms moved further and further out as this takes place?

[Mouse]

Beautifully drawn!

A little tip about scanning things....

I think there may be a few grains of grit on the scanner glass for some reason. They show up as the dark spots in the top right corner?

Anything that raises the paper from the glass, even just a millimetre, can reduce the quality of the scan by a huge amount.

Try cleaning the scanner bed (and/or the map if it's got grit on it) and scanning again.

[Voolf]

Beautiful city map. I dont know if the "bad" scan is really a scanner issue or made like that intentionally, but i like it. Map has that nice worn flavour

[Falconius]

As for the density, I try to use the numbers, say your looking to draw a city of 3000 population (population is always important), I figure that should include the outlying buildings as well since most medieval cities taxed them as well and where else are the city folk going to get there food. I figure a medieval family is between 4-6 per household on average ( do to poor health, poor eating habits, and the many other hazards in a magical/medieval world families would naturally need to have more children) and thus each house is worth at least this amount of population. And how do you mean proper buildings in the outlying farm areas, if its a long established city wouldn't they be complete, and the uncompleted/ still being constructed outlying buildings/ new farms moved further and further out as this takes place?

It just feels like the outlying buildings don't have a purpose. Farmers don't commute to work, they live next to the land they farm for themselves and their lord so that is what leads to their housing density. Of course they also want to be next to other people for protection and community, so they would be more like clusters of houses in the middle of fields. With a city, those who can't afford to live in the city would want to build as close to the walls as possible, since they aren't farming and must presumably have some means of employment in the city. This means two things; that they couldn't afford to build big houses, or many houses. Farmers too would tend to build their buildings around the city but where they still had access to the fields, they'd have reasonable houses, but wouldn't require so many for the limited amount of farmland. There would also likely be, depending on the way the economy is going, shanty towns of transient labourers and such, who set up mud houses or similar on unused land. Like perhaps around the cherry orchard there, except they'd probably be driven off by the farmer for fear they'd steal the cherries, or in the southern pasture land.

At least that's how it just seems to me. I could be off my rocker. As I said what you have there feels very realistic to me, but by the same token it feels like there are just slightly too many houses outside the walls, spread too thin.

[FrancescaBaerald]

I tried to use ink before, unfortunately I can not find a fine enough pen for the detail ( I actually have done a lot of work with ink when I was still in school, for projects mostly buildings and such) . Most of my maps where done on regular weight printer paper. When I try to do the really fine detail ( such as the field rows ), it bleeds into each other.

Really nice job!
Have you tried Micron 005 to ink your maps? It works great for me
http://www.jstationery.com/image/cac..._b-640x480.jpg