[Award Winner] Tutorial & Guide for Hand Drawn Maps (Pen & Ink w/ Photoshop)

[Badger]

Couple suggestions for you to try, Del.

Offer a few mini-tutorials on various land forms and/or close up encounter area: create mountainous terrain step by step, create a coastline and river valley reaching the sea, create a structure exterior, and a path in the woods.

Concentrate on the immediate areas concerned, not trying to create complete maps of each tutorial area, just enough to sate some understanding of techniques with pens.

GP

Great Idea GP !! That actually makes more sense. Hadn't thought about it like that at all... but I think that's a good idea... plus, it won't take near the time it does to complete a map... Thanks!

[Badger]

GamerPrinter suggested I do several different aspects of mapping with Pen and Ink, and I agree with him. This is probably the best way to cover the subject rather than just do one map.

Mountains

When drawing with P&I, I always do everything in pencil first. I usually choose a softer pencil such as a 2b or 3b. This doesn't press into the paper (leaving an indention) and the softer lead is easier to erase with a gum eraser. Always use either a Gum Eraser or a white Plastic Eraser. The white eraser's sometimes come in pencil form that you can slide in and out, adjusting the length. They do also have them in blocks like you had back in first grade.

So, we draw some mountains, some rough looking inverted "V"'s. I then block in the areas that will be shaded.
mtnpencil.jpg

Next comes the outline. Generally I like my mountains to have a thicker, darker outline, wider than the shading and hatch that will be used. For this and (all the rest of the outlines) I used a speedball dip pen with a Hunt 56 tip. Any of the softer, larger tips will usually work, depending on how you want it to look.

So that I don't run my hand across wet ink. (Dip Ink takes FAR longer than technical pen ink to dry.... a while, so be careful where you place your hands when inking.) I turn the paper at an angle where I'm drawing from Top>Bottom and draw all the lines in that direction at once. Then turn the paper so that I can draw the remaining lines all at once. Get into the habit of inking this way. Drawing lines that are all at the same angle on the same section you are working on. It saves time as well as not moving the paper around so much, increasing the chance of smearing wet ink.
mtnoutline.jpg

Next comes the shading. There are several ways to do so, not all of them are shown here, but experiment and find what you like and what catches your eye. The first one I used a random hatch that didn't (tried not to) cross each other as it covered the shaded side of the mountain. I used tech. pens #1; 0; 00; and 3x0 to let you see the varying widths.
mtnhatch01.jpg

The next hatching is just a random series of lines sketched at different angles over the shaded part of the mountain. The top was done with tech. pens, the bottom with dip pens.
mtnhatch02.jpg

And last, full shading, similar to tolkien style mountains and fairly popular with the public. I personally don't like them to much but I thought I'd add this in. These types of mountains, and this type of shading should probably not be done with tech. pens as they were not made to 'shade' or ink in large swatches of black. These were done with Dip pens having wide tips that distribute a lot of ink at once. B5, 513EF, 56 and 99 were used in this one.
mtnfullshade.jpg

Practice drawing you mountains as you doodle and you will find they become easier and easier to draw. I've drawn so many mountains to date that I should actually own the Rockies.

This same principal applies to your hills as well. Because what is a hill but just a little mountains

If you want to see a certain type of mountains style, just request it and I'll do my best to accommodate your needs.

[Highlander]

Actually, if you would like, would it be possible to do a quick one on how you do hills as well? Personally, I can do mountains well, but hills always mess me up, as I'm never sure where to shade them.

[Badger]

hills1.jpg
Sure thing. I too had trouble with shading hills, so I taught myself a little trick. The thing with hills (imo) is that they need just subtle shading. One of the mistakes I would make (still do sometimes) is over shading them. So try to train yourself to put in very few lines ... because you can always add more, its harder to take them out.

Step 1, draw the hill. For this hill, we make the simple upside down "U"'s with a little flare at the bottoms.
Step 2, start 2/3 the length of the hill at the base and draw a line back to meet up with the (shaded) back side of the hill.
Step 3, start at the apex of the hill, slightly off center and draw a basic "C" shape connecting with where you started the line in step 2.
Step 4, Block it all in. You have a shaded hill!!
Hills2Howto.jpg

Practice doing hills like this whenever you can it trains the eye and hand to to make that simple shape come natural and precise everytime.

Now, shade them on the same side you have your mountains shaded, but make them a little more subtle and less dark. Even using fewer lines than I have used in the example. Put hatch along the "C" shape and slide lines down the back curve.
hills3.jpg

Once you get simple hills down, then make the rugged hills that match your mountains, remember simple and less is usually more. So just put in a few lines on the shaded side for each hill, do each hill with a few lines and then step back and look at it .... add more to suite and you have some hills
hills4.jpg

I hope that helps out in some way.

[Highlander]

That really helps! I went and tried it, and it looks very good.

Maybe forests next? I'm finding your information extremely helpful.

[ravells]

This is turning out to be a serious masterclass - thanks Del!

[Badger]

That really helps! I went and tried it, and it looks very good.
Maybe forests next? I'm finding your information extremely helpful.

Glad to help Highlander. I'm glad if at least one person gains anything from these tutorials. I'm surprised that I can show/teach anyone anything at all. I'm working on forests right now, which is fairly broad in ways to map, but I'll try to cover all the basics.

This is turning out to be a serious masterclass - thanks Del!

Much Obliged Rav. Masterclass tho? That's pushing the bill, I'm just happy with being a tutorial winner

I'm open to questions and suggestions from everyone though, I'm actually surprised at how much I like making these tutorials, it's quite a bit of work, but fun at the same time.

[Badger]

I'm going to have to go back and collect all this stuff and put it into a PDF for ya'll to download. I didn't expect the tutorial to encompass as much as it has so far. And I still have Loads I can do.
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Pen and Ink Tutorial: Forests

Such a broad range of styles can be applied to depict a forested area on a map. I had trouble deciding where I could start it, what I should show in it, and how I was going to do that. So when in doubt, start at the beginning and show the basics, so that's what I'll do.

I've always broken forest's down into three main categories. Deciduous forests (Oak, maple, beech, elm, etc...) Coniferous forests (pine, fir, cedars, redwoods, etc...) and Tropical Forest (Jungle).

I drew simple shapes, the kind you find on a lot of simple line drawn maps, each a basic representation of the kind of category they represent. First the Pencil drawing (3b) and then inked them in with an outline (tech pen .50) and shading (tech pen .30)
Your shading really depends on your map, like these ISO trees. I drew them in the same basic direction as I've been shading everything else I've drawn in the tutorial so far. I also would start out with less lines when you shade the dark side of the tree, I (of course) drew too many, probably because it was a single tree each, on a fairly large scale where trees are concerened.
Generally if you are placing single trees around the map in various locations. The will be smaller than this, but more importantly they don't require too much shading on the 'leaves', I generally like to show shadow by placing one on the ground where you would normally see a shadow, and maybe ink a small part of the dark side of the symbol. Since this Forest tutorial will likely run in two parts, I'll try to show it the next go around.
frst1shadingpencil.jpg

Notice that you bring your strokes down all in the same direction. You can go back and forth, as long as its in that direction. I did anyway.

Ready for the secret to trees?
3.
Yep... the number 3. This is the primary stroke I use to make trees, over and over, in different directions. I show you step by step, just put one 3 next to the other until you complete a circle. and VIOLA!! You have a tree.
No~3forme.jpg
Big deal, right? YES

Now use that same stroke to link together a series of treetops. Sometimes I do one tree at time, blended together, other times outline the entire top part and fill it in with the 3 stroke. Then plant some trunks underneath it and start shading.
Forest_side.jpg

Notice I used a simple cross thatch on the ground, stipple to darken the interior of the forest, and a scribble thatch for the treetops. A scribble thatch might be my own made up term, but it means do just that, scribble (Lightly!) into the area with a fine tech pen (.25, .18 or .13) to give the forest definition and 'leaves'.

From there, its variations of how you present the forest on the map, of which there are probably hundreds of which I'm not even aware of. But the ones below are the ones that I generally use or variations there of.
forestvariants.jpg

I'll be continuing this with the other two forest types, when I get it finished. Only had time to do this one. Enjoy. Again, any questions or specific examples that you want to see... please let me know and I will try to accommodate.

[Steel General]

Great job so far Delgo!

I may never get into hand inked maps, but if I ever decide I know where to go to get started.

I dub thee newly repped *bonk*

[mmmmmpig]

This just keeps getting better and better