Trees and scaling

[swiss]

For me at that scale, one tree means "there are a few trees here but not really so many that you could hide in the trees, but like it's not barren, there's a few trees here and there and it's nice, y'know, peaceful, not dark and scary, there's still sunlight dancing in the grass, birds singing..." Especially in flatlands it's good to have little treebreaks, even if it's mostly farming.

Yes, I often have single trees on their own. Yes, I have thought about it very very hard. I like having trees visible as trees, so I use them as symbolic representations of the essence of that land. Full blown clumps are forest proper. Exact scale isn't too important to me, I'd rather capture the spirit of a place.

Glad to know I'm not the only one overthinking trees

I agree on capturing the spirit of a place

[KMAlexander]

They're extracted from the actual maps, so it's actual copies of elements they used—they're all hundreds of years old so in the public domain. I think it's a nice way to keep the work alive in a new format, hence why I name the sets after the engraver/cartographer.

Making brushes is easy. Extracting them from maps can be a bit complex since I do color correction and sizing, and depending on the source material's quality it can be a bit trickier.