WIP - City

[iguy]

Hello,

WIP city that i am starting using Gimp, this is my second map and i am getting a little frustrated, i have the general shape i want with the roads and houses placed where i want it. i am trying to add some colour and textures to make it look like an actual map of a city with some flair.

basically the long and short of this is the town is primarily a factory town focused in textiles with some exports of foods. the poor/working class are closer to the factories and the better off are spread out further away, with the factory owners and land owners being the wealthiest and with the largest houses and land.

towards the bottom are the fields for the sheep with farming fields growing mostly root veggies and such close by. i am trying to make the colours really pop and really incorporate into the map a sense of realism

i am having a very hard time trying to get the colours to look ok and not an eye sore.

if anyone has any ideas or points i would love to hear them. thank you very much

[johnnycman]

Some points to work on for your work in progress.
First Point: You have drawn a closed road system, no roads in to get raw materials for your factories, way out to export the products of your factories. I can't distinguish main roads from secondary roads and city streets.
Second point: You have no source of water, no rivers or lakes.
Third point: Are your residential areas population densities rather than individual structures? In reality most individual structures have direct access to a roadway and are not surrounded and cut off by other properties.
Fourth point: What do the people do? Are there shops, schools, taverns, inns, churches?
Fifth point: You don't really need color. You can indicate different types of land by using dashed, dotted or solid lines.
Sixth point: Once you start labeling things with the text tool, it will be more map-like.
Seventh point: There are dedicated software packages with far better tools for drawing maps than gimp. Some of them are even free. Just google fantasy map software.