Del's Doodles

[Badger]

The shadows really make things pop I think and are well worth taking the extra time to do.

Anyway I think it looks good although I tend not to favour such heavily saturated colours. But that's more personal preference.

An easy method to do shadows that I use is to do them on their own layer. So you have you land/grass colour on one layer, and all your structures and building colour on another layer. In between, just paint in the shadows in solid black. Then simply lower the opacity of the shadow layer to make them as dark or light as you like.

Ya, putting all those little things into a map like that is what takes time, but what also makes it worth it. I'm technically colorblind, not fully.. I can see most colors, but I have a tendency to misinterpret colors when they get too muted (I guess you might say).. I will easily get lightly shaded greens or blues mistaken with grey's and purples... it's annoying. But I'm just basically taking the colors on CS out for a spin. That is exactly how I did my drop shadows for this map, since CS doesn't have a drop shadow effect like PS does (or if it does, I haven't found it yet). I used an airbrush in full black and turned down the opacity of the layer. I think you get more control out of your shadows that way.

I'll be done with a castle doodle soon, I hope. Taking more time than I wanted too on it.

Del

[Badger]

Castle Peenball.png
Yup, I half-assed this one... it is a doodle after all. I just wanted to see how about a small protective castle outline... how hard circles and straight lines are in CS. One could say, not that hard at all!! Anyway... I was really tired by the time putting some colors in arrived so I just slopped them on there and said YUP... I'm done! Good Night Cartographers!!

Del

[Badger]

Rooftypes.png

Trying different roof types here, and practicing drop shadows in Clip Studio, which continues to impress. Tried to tone down the colors, or mute them somewhat. CS has a lot of materials you can download for it, all free for commercial or private use, but takes some fiddling to find where they are after you get them. Still not sure how to get the pen textures into the pen.... eventually I'll figure it out.

Del

[Badger]

monastic-cloister.png

A small Monastery or Temple with garden grounds. Complete with Bell Tower!! Ya know, if your into that sorta thing. Anyways, the practice continues and the doodles doodle on.

Del

[Badger]

Illustration3.png
So, if you own Clip Studio, then you know you have to have an account that signs in everytime you use it. Well I was looking around at things and noticed you can put a cover photo on your profile of 1140 x 340. So I started a doodle a couple hours ago and ended up with this when I got done. I love it when a doodle turns into art... It's like witnessing real magic happen. Hey call me sentimental or whatever, maybe I'm just crazy... Anyways, hope ya'll enjoy!!

Del

[Ilanthar]

You're productive! Interesting stuff. And I kinda agree with Larb both on saturated colors and shadows .

[Badger]

Shadows_Inn.png
Here's an Inn!! Working on shadows, right now I'm so slow on drawing... this took me about two hours from start to almost finished... If this was a commission I would have taken even longer to get all the color inside the edges and make it look better, but since I'm just doodling and practicing I get a little sloppy. If any of you professional's have advice for how to get faster at things, I am all ears!!

Del

[LunaticDesign]

Wow, I really like these!

[Larb]

Getting faster is mainly just a matter of practice really. You basically develop a routine or process. Also the improvements are pretty clear already so keep going!

Another thing that can help is knowing your palette ahead of time. Like for my big Reyalinn town map, I didn't have to worry about the colours because I already had them set from previous practice maps.

[LunaticDesign]

Definitely not a professional in painting but I've been a photographer for a while and the thing that helped me to improve my speed is to develop a workflow that works for you and to practice. Sometimes this means that I would edit the same image several times working toward the same desired result. I'm still working on my work flow and figuring out what preset actions I can plan using photoshop to minimize the recursive nature of image manipulation. To get to that point I need to learn how to get what I want from the images that I producing and I am certainly working on that point.