J's Inkman Experiment thread

[Chashio]

Beautiful stuff J!

[damonjynx]

Ok. I'm putting my pencils and stuff away now... John, you're not a cartographer, you're an artist, in every sense of the word, that draws maps.

[J.Edward]

Wow, what a discovery for me. This thread is magnificent. Thank you for sharing this maps with us. They are all so gorgeous.

Thank you Voolf Glad you are enjoying it.

OMG

You never cease to amaze...

Damn! Its just gorgeous

Hehe, i aim to please, Mouse

That's amazing... only little dots, and yet, you can tell if it's a forest, a plain, a hill...
What a talent !

Thanks JO
There is a lot you can do with little squiggles or dots or lines.

Glad to see that this incredible zombie is still moving !
Interesting maps. Algefar is a good example of your incredible sense of perspective and drawing skills.

Arrrrggg... the zombie still crawls through the tomb of mappery!!!
Thanks Ilanthar

Beautiful stuff J!

Thanks chashio

Ok. I'm putting my pencils and stuff away now...
John, you're not a cartographer, you're an artist, in every sense of the word, that draws maps.

Ya gotta pull those pencils back out Damon, ya gotta.
There was a time I felt the same when looking at some people's work. For real.
Best thing - practice. Try new things. Practice. Work on core principles. Practice.
Oh, and practice. A lot. Draw as often as you possibly can. Best thing you can do.

And thank you very much. That was incredibly nice to read.

[J.Edward]

Okay... so, Chashio was showing her 5 minute sketch maps in a thread the other day and it got me thinking of doing the same.
I did some 5 minute sketches, a 3 minute sketch, and a 2 minute sketch.
It was interesting what you think to draw under pressure. I went straight for the top down, initially.
Then I tried to get myself going in a perspective direction.

5 Minute sketches --- and then --- 3 + 2 Minutes sketches

5-Min sketch 01res.jpg > 3-2-Min sketch 01res.jpg

As a note.. I added a bit of a darker line on those 5 minute sketches, after the fact.

Now I will try to speed paint them... maybe. If I can stand it.

[Chashio]

No 1 Minutes?
Those look fabulous. Much cleaner with the line work than my technique, but... different styles. I've always liked shading.
It is interesting what you fall into; I definitely have a preference for the panoramic views and struggle more with top down, though I pull them out occasionally.
These are really nice J. That bottom one on the first page reminds me a bit of your Harlasea map for some reason.

[J.Edward]

Thanks Chashio
Yeah, trying to break trends in your own methods can be tricky.
It's so easy to fall back into what you always do.

Ironically, I think I was thinking of Harlasea a bit at a point while doing that third one.

Well, I took about 30 minutes to try to get some color going for the three 5 minute sketch ones, which I spent a bit more time on adding in some darker lines and such.
Perhaps an additional 1-6 minutes on each. Probably 1 minute on sketch 1, 4 minutes on sketch 2, and possibly 6 minutes on sketch 3 [though maybe more].
5 Minute sketch edit scan.jpg
It is... okay, but, clearly not enough time for me to really get it going well.
Still, it is a good experiment to do just to see what you do and how you do it so you can look for ways to change, improve, add in new techniques, etc.
And it's fun.

30 minutes color total for all 3 images together

5 Minute speed paint.jpg

[ThomasR]

I'd love my 30+ hours maps to look half as good as your 35ish experiments ...

[Voolf]

Wow, drawing this in such a short time.... this confirms my previous post in my thread, dont know if you read it J.E but i will paste it here.

I know one person who appears to be not fed up by drawing buildings at all. Its a robot J.E. (all due respect). Just look at his last city commission. It is crazy ! I have an image of him doing this kind of maps within an hour before breakfast sketching something with one hand like he didn't even wanted to.

I was talking with Mouse and the city map i mentioned is Archensheen

[Mouse]

Aye - I remember you saying that

John - I said this of Ilanthar the other day, and its just as applicable to you:

You are one of the Poets of Cartography we are lucky enough to mingle with on this forum on a daily basis

[Chashio]

. . . . . . clearly not enough time for me to really get it going well. . . .

Hmm... Yes. Clearly not. [shakes head, chuckling at J.Edward's ridiculous comments]

Voolf, you're assuming he eats breakfast. I think he just recharges a battery or something.