Tutorials on how to draw simple relief maps?

[Broadhead]

Hey everyone, I've been trying to draw my own relief maps and I'm looking for a tutorial that might help me draw more interesting and more accurate shapes for my different elevation layers. Let me know if you have any tips or know any tutorials.

[waldronate]

What kind of relief maps? Basic contour maps or more Swiss-style maps?
http://shadedrelief.com/ and http://www.reliefshading.com/ are both good sites to start from. https://books.google.com/books/about...d=WIYDDgAAQBAJ is still a classic in the field.

[Broadhead]

I'm aiming for something in this guy's style. I feel like if I keep it simple (5 or 6 layers) it's something I can manage drawing in GIMP

xhz8cm4v8gz81.png
sbzpr0uo18281.png
Crimea Relief Guide Map.png

[waldronate]

Those maps have the advantage of being real-world maps with different labels. Drawing your own is rather more difficult. I'll offer you the generic advice: water flows downhill and always crosses contour lines at right angles. If you can use a hydraulic simulator to generate rivers on a heightfield, you can posterize the resulting heightfield to get contours to use as input.
If you can live with slices of real-world data, take a look at https://www.naturalearthdata.com/ to see if it's suitable for your needs.
As with most maps, the complex part of the process is getting the label harmoniously placed on the map.

[Tiana]

Much easier to generate a height map and then use the QGis > extract contours pipeline to get your contours. Other World Mapper has a tool for drawing them with vector. Basically, you should do it as vector if you're going to hand-do them.

[Broadhead]

Ok that makes a lot of sense, thanks!.

For reference, this is where I'm at so far. As you can see I've got the island of the Hierojord up to what I feel like is a pretty acceptable level. I'm going to keep testing brush motions and shapes to compound into elevation ranges on the smaller features. Then when I feel like I understand how to shape things respectably, I'll attempt a larger mountain range or a complex highland.

Screen Shot 2022-07-13 at 12.35.57 PM.png

[Redrobes]

This is how I do them:
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...l=1#post296662
Hope it helps.

[Broadhead]

This is very helpful, thanks!