Voolf's miscellaneous art

[Voolf]

When I was a child (ooooh.... about that many years ago now) there was a TV programme called Blue Peter, and it was on every week. They would run art and craft projects to teach us kids how to make things, and each week they would do a little bit more to the project, like sticking the cut out pieces of card together, or painting it, etc. Because air time was limited they had this way of showing you the method, then suddenly producing a perfectly finished version of what it should look like once you've finished doing that stage, using the phrase "And so that you can see how it should look when you've done that - here is one I did earlier"

It was at that point that I would stare at the perfect model on screen, and then down at my partly crumpled and disjointed construction all covered in wet glue and paint, and pull a... 'do I laugh or cry'... face at it

That's how I feel when I see your maps, even though you do these WIPs for us. What you have there is WAAAAY better than my attempted scribble at this end!!!! ROFL!

But please don't let that put you off. Its fun (and pretty hilarious) just trying to imitate you

I think i understand you and it makes me little sad Mouse ;(, but seeing your recent maps in gimp i believe you are getting there ! Just keep up.
Thanks for this interesting analogy

This looks great! Very nice job on the line work and the colors. I love how you have highlighted and shaded the mountains. And the color of the ocean is quite nice. On my screen the color looks very blue but it also has a texture that I like the look of.

I'm completely guessing here but are you adding a very light white highlight near the rivers to make them look like they are receded (is that a word?) into the land? I've always wondered how people make rivers look like they've actually cut into the land like these look.

Thanks Tonnichiwa. The colours are actually picked randomly for now to divide everything from each other. I will probably change them later a little bit.

As for the river. The science behind a river carved into the land is actually very simple. You are right about the highlight. Basicly what you have to do is to draw a little light on the land, just next to the river on one side, and shadows on the other side. Shadow indicate that the land near river goes down, and light, that there is an elevation. That makes the river looks like it's in depression (carved into the land).
In my maps i always indicate sun somewhere on the left top corner, so the shadows are always on the left side of the river and light on the right side.