Hand painted maps

[languard]

And a new map, description in the spoiler. Want to make sure it'd readable without me saying what it is.

 

A river coming out of the mountains, with a trade road running along side it. To the southwest is a grassy plain.

mountains.png


And this one isn't a map. I was experimenting with strokes, and thought that this one part looked like a thatched roof. A few strokes later and I had a hobbit hole

hobbit.png

[Chashio]

Awesome hobbit hole! A fellow looks-like opportunist The paper buckling is throwing me off a bit, but I do like that speckled texture on your mountains; I'd suggest maybe playing around next with line weight for the top-lines of the peaks... think thinner and or lighter on the sunlit slopes and like you have done on the shaded slopes. Not that the style is bad, just as another technique to try for experience. Also try practicing washing out edges, like a gradient.

The river is perhaps a bit wispy and undefined on its borders compared with the solidity of the rest of the marks (I do like the stroke texture, just not the shore edges)--and I am definitely assuming that this is the river and the road is the smaller, darker stroke-- I'd be tempted to go over the river again with a wet, low opacity stroke the thickness of the river to give it a touch more definition, but that's me.

The grassy plain didn't read as a grassy plain to me; I generally associate soft washes or bare paper as plains, but again... just me.

Looks like you're having fun with it. Keep 'em coming, languard And if I happen to get too critical for comfort or style aim, do please let me know; I've a tendency to over-comment on occasion.

[languard]

As long as the critique is done with an honest intent to help, critique away

I agree that the river could use stronger definition on its borders. I did try and go over the river with a light gray, but it dried a lot lighter than I thought it would.

The plains...blank paper bugs me, so I really want to try and find a good style to indicate plains. Perhaps I'll experiment with washes, see how that turns out.

[Chashio]

Things look darker when the paper gets water-heavy; that gets me almost every time with color washes aggravating as ... although I think you can minimize that issue if you use thicker art paper.

[languard]

Today's Lesson Learned:
Don't add too much water to the ink Couldn't get a thin dark line to save my life.

mountainshadow.png

[Chashio]

haha that just made my day.

... I recall learning that lesson. Fun times.

[languard]

Today I mostly threw practicing brush techniques to the wind and just had fun creating a cave system. Experimented a little at the end with trying to fill in the rock areas.

cave.png

I'm beginning to suspect that I'm using the wrong kind of paper though. Constantly having to deal with the ink bleeding through to the surface I'm painting on.

[Chashio]

Ink has a tendency to bleed through things... even a lot more than watercolors on sketch-type or printer paper (the water goes through much more than the pigment but sometimes the pigment joins it if the brush is heavy with both). I usually put a paper towel between my paper and desk surface to be on the safe side, and it does help to absorb excess water. Maybe watercolor paper would prove too thick for ink (100lb business cards are not enough for ink with water), but different paper also has a different feel to the handling. I guess just find something you like to work on. I haven't researched paper specifically for ink painting... but if you find a good one, I'd love to hear about it.

[moop123]

I can't find a thread for hand 'drawn' maps but this seems to be the place. I have done a couple drafts of this map. It has been done of 4 A-4 sized sheets of paper and all
done by hand. I am soon going to move this project onto something simple like auto-realm to get a digital base for a much bigger project on a piece of software more suited to very
detailed maps. However at the moment this is what I have. The pics (photos, since I don't have a scanner at the moment) should look as though they are joined together however they
might be slightly off. As I took a pic of each one to make it easier to look at the map as a whole. I hope you like it, waiting for feedback.

western empires.jpgeastern races.jpg
Orcish sands.jpgCrag'Mar.jpg

[moop123]

Also I would imagine a nice way to use ink to your advantage is ink pressing. For anyone who doesn't know about it you need a roller, a tray you don't mind getting dirty and ink.

You roll the ink out evenly on the tray, quite thin (so their is nearly no shine in the light, though their should still be some.

If you have applied to much you can place some blank or scrap pieces of paper and press them onto the tray and lift them off having them take off some of the ink. Do this as many
times as you see fit.

The ink should not mark the paper on touch but instead should only mark the paper whenever and wherever you touch the paper.

You should draw the map on a piece of tracing paper and when you want to do the the full version simply lay down a piece of normal, blank paper onto the ink tray, flip the tracing paper over and place it onto the tray, on top of the blank paper so that it appears the the map is all backwards and then draw over it all again.

Wherever you want their to be shading simple smudge your finger onto the tracing paper. This will lightly cover that area of the map in ink. The more you do it the dark it becomes. Lift it off and the map is complete.

Fear not if it has smudged in areas you didn't want it to because you will still have the tracing paper copy to repeat the process. However this accidental smudging can
create quite a nice effect and it can sometimes come out better than you expected. Don't be afraid to mess around with it.

I'm sure there are lots of videos on youtube of this so check them out.