[WIP] Dor-en-Ernil - The Land of the Prince: ...Yes, another ME map ;)

[Diamond]

I'll chime in and add my vote to the second one as well.

[Abu Lafia]

Thanks for the feedback everybody! Well, i thought this'll be fun ... "you know nuthin' Abu Lafia!!!" XD ... My hands are hurting and i'm pretty exhausted ... and only a couple of hundred more mountains to go . Here is the latest wip with the settings everybody "voted" for:

Attachment 74318

I made some more tests with different layer settings and colours and came up with this. Imo, it fits better with the background colour and while letting the contours shine more, i really like the subtlety of it (still amazed by the results of this rather simple technique!). Regarding the mountain-chapter of this wip, i can see a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel ...

Attachment 74323

Cheers,
AL

[ravells]

Worth the effort! Those mountains are really nice!

[tainotim]

Very nice Abu Lafia! I love the city ikons you have made. This will amazing when finished.

Cheers,
Tainotim

[Abu Lafia]

Worth the effort! Those mountains are really nice!

Thanks Ravs. Glad you like them!

Very nice Abu Lafia! I love the city ikons you have made. This will amazing when finished.

Cheers,
Tainotim

Thank you tainotim! It means a lot. I admire your work, which surely had some influence on the way i tried to make those icons . Regarding the amazingness of the finished map: From your lips to God's ears!

I have a lot of other things to do atm, so the progress on the map is slow. The mountains are nearly finished, but i'm going to upload the next time if they are complete and the forests are done and highlighted/shaded. After that i might rework/refine some of the icons (at least the Dol Amroth icon)

[J.Edward]

It's looking good Abu. The icons look great.
Not sure if I said before but the forests are really well done.

[Abu Lafia]

Thank you J., much appreciated. I only whish i had done the lines of the forests a bit thinner... no nerves to redo it all. Well i learned my lesson XD
Latest update: (downscaled version, the file's getting too big)
Attachment 74448
I put some highlights on the forests and there are stil some more to place.
The mountains are lacking a 100% consistent perspective but i'm somewhat happy with the "big picture" so far. After the mountain-marathon i feel a bit burned out ... so any thoughts/hints/suggestions what to improve and ofc all critique is very welcome!
Cheers,
AL

[ravells]

Looking Brilliant!!! I love the forests!! I really didn't notice the weight of the lines being too heavy at all, but yeah, but if you're like me and you look at the maps you've done all you can see are the things you wish you'd done better - but I think in a way that's a good thing. I've been v.busy in r/l and have had only a little time to work on DA, but will hopefully get back to it this week.

[Abu Lafia]

Thanks Ravs, glad you like the forests! Yeah, as someone said here before: Maps are never (really) finished ...and i would add, in a way they can never be, because they're only an attempt to "fix" (make readable) the ever-changing "territory"...

I made some more city-icons ("Glanhir" , "Spathlin" and an unnamed town/castle and tower on the Belfalas east-coast).
I also placed the city-labels for testing (only for the city names i found on Fenlon's maps -- my main resource).

Attachment 74498

Btw. i finally got a graphic tablet (wacom intuos p&t S), yay! There is a ton to learn, but it's really fun. I found the "pressure-opacity" options in gimp are somewhat limited, but i tried out krita and have to say, the possibilities to manipulate your brushes/brush settings are fantastic, as the whole program seems to be much more optimized to work with a tablet/pen. Ofc i have to make more tests to compare the features of the two and when/for what ends to use which program.
Here my first (still pretty clunky!) attempt with the pen XD:
inseltest.jpeg

I did the new icons with it too, but decided to go with the style i had before (no fancy linework)

Cheers,
AL

[J.Edward]

I'm glad you got a tablet Abu.
I think you're really going to like it.
You can do a lot more with it.
I think your first attempt is not so clunky. Quite nice actually.

The icons look great. This one is really coming along.