[WIP] Western Galatyn - Fantasy map commission

[- Max -]

Hey Guilders,

Here's a new work in progress on a private commission I'm working on. Cool thing with private clients, you barely have to deal with NDA or confidentiality .

So the request is basically some kind of political map similar to the style of the Ireland map I've made for the challenge "map the same place twice" at the Guild in 2013, emulating some very early 18th century maps. Things are already started with this first stage, where landmass is defined. For some reasons, the jpeg compression doesn't seem to show the "grainy" texture of the waterlines and the coastlines, ah well...

Western Galatyn1.jpg

[snodsy]

Is this the way you typically do the coastline waves, three thicker ones close to shore, two further and lighter away? I like the way it softens the waves further out and transiitions out to sea. Nice start.

[- Max -]

Thanks Snodsy. It depends on maps but I use to lower the opacity of coastals waves gradually when I want to fade them further out on the background yes.

[- Max -]

On this second stage, I've added main reliefs and rivers. Not too fancy mountains here, this isn't the main focus on the map and it has to convey the general old/not too fantasy feel of the map.

Western Galatyn2.jpg

So basically this is a quick and simple process here on mountains I've already used in a couple of maps :
With a basic round brush with pressure control on size I draw the overall shape. The only different setting is that I add some noise on the brush, this gives some grain that can be interesting on such kind of maps. Then I'm drawing a quick shading with a light hatching and then more located shading and various scribbles accentuating the pressure on the stylus.

Mountains.jpg

[Eilathen]

Looking very nice, as always, Max. I love the new mountains.
Will be interesting to see this develop...keep it coming

[- Max -]

Thank you Eilathen

Update : I've added territories borders, all settlements icons, roads network and heraldry placement. Borders colors were painted by hand, I wanted to have some very slight thickness variations and not something too clean.

Western Galatyn3.jpg

Next stage will be labelling the map. I'll go with a simple labels hierarchisation, that conveys the map style. I'm mainly using fonts styles here (regular, italic, capitalized letters). Color will be only used on the provinces large labels and with a slight variation on Counties labels :

Labels.jpg

[Ilanthar]

Great, another WIP! Gorgeous map already. I'm observing this hatched style very closely .

[- Max -]

Thank you Ilanthar

[- Max -]

Update : Labeling is done and also added the main forested areas.

Western Galatyn4.jpg

[GreatWhiteNorth]

Looks excellent already (Edit-sidenote, I made this commend after looking at your first image only!). Do you make the background textures yourself, or do you have a source you use to acquire them? I'm always impressed by how unique and interesting your map textures are and I'd love to be able to add something similar to my future work.