Practicing

[Lezales]

Very inspirational stuff. That's a lot of practice, it'll show in your skills later !

I've got a question though. Are those mountains (#34 and #3 entirely drawn in Photoshop or scanned in some way ? I just find the lines very sweet. When I do it I never am able to get the same curviness and naturalness of paper and pencil. I do have a graphic tablet. But even then. Maybe it's the brush you use, or your brush settings ?

[talisid]

Inspiring stuff to read through these "practice" threads.

I'm not sure as to what they're really called but they're found in southeast Asia. Just these tall pillars of rock with some vegetation here and there. I have 3 possible names - karst, polje, and mogotes.

Just a couple things, the pillars you are referring to don't look like they could be any of those things: karst is more a landscape carved away in pockets and stuff, not leaving such steep pillars; polje usually refers to a sort of valley in karstic landscapes, where sediment collects to form a flat basin; mogotes aren't usually that steep or tall.

Perhaps instead they are pillars of something like basalt or quartzite? (which depends on the geography for what makes sense). But they still might be disproportionately sized next to the mountains. I'm not sure what specific regions in southeast Asia you are using for inspiration, but for similar formations I would look at Hạ Long Bay in Vietnam, and the Wulingyuan area in south-central China. Hope I am being helpful and not annoying.

I'm new to posting here (been lurking on and off for a while), so feel free to ignore me!

EDIT: I think the pillar-like formations of basalt I referred to are called columnar basalt, but I'm not positive. I don't think quartzite pillars have a special name.

[Deadshade]

I'm not sure as to what they're really called but they're found in southeast Asia. Just these tall pillars of rock with some vegetation here and there. I have 3 possible names - karst, polje, and mogotes.

They are found all over the world.
They belong to the so called karstic formations which are created by dissolving limestone.
The classification of karstic formations is complex because they contain a large diversity of features - caves, funnels, pits, towers, pillars etc.
This specific kind of limestone towers like in the Ha Long Bay is called fenglin.

Some nice pictures and a good deal of explanation is here : https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/weihuang/www/Research.HTML

[Ascension]

Lezales: 5-pixel hard round brush; entirely Photoshop, my brain, and drawing tablet. It's hard to find a good balance between absolute realism and speed so just keep at it, that's what I'm doing.

Tallisid: Of course the proportions are off. My little tufts of grass are out of proportion and so are my rivers and trees and everything else. If I tried to draw everything to perfect proportion then all I'd be drawing are little dots and that's not very interesting to look at. But you are right about polje.

Deadshade: That photo is exactly what I'm thinking of. My drawing might be off but that's what I'm thinking of.

This is what the map will actually look like. I'm drawing at twice the size so I can get more detail in and when I reduce it by half this is what it looks like. The actual image size I'm working on is 6,000 x 6,000. The second image is the current full scale image. To be even more honest, I zoom in to 200% to draw.

[Deadshade]

This is the mother of all mountain ranges you are drawing in the SE.
Totally correct - and a vast limestone plain elevating from the ocean which will give the karstic formations is also right.

[- Max -]

To be even more honest, I zoom in to 200% to draw.

I tend to do that a lot too. Besides making it more comfortable, it gives a very soft blur to the linework that make it smooth. i love that.

[Chashio]

I tend to do that a lot too. Besides making it more comfortable, it gives a very soft blur to the linework that make it smooth. i love that.

Ooh, is that how you manage it. I've always liked that effect in your maps, though I thought it was just a tool setting, or maybe a slight filter applied later. huh. Learn something new

[arsheesh]

This is looking very good! Loads of detail, it must slow going. Looking forward to seeing it develop.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Ascension]

It's slow because I only get an hour or two a day to work on it at most so I work in little sections. Like, today my goal is to fill in this chunk, draw for an hour, oops gotta go do that thing, sigh.