My first attempt at city mapping

[sliceofmeat1]

I discovered this website a week ago when I started looking into worldbuilding. Mapping looked like one of the most fun aspects of worldbuilding to me so a few days ago, after browsing the guild for a while, I started drawing. My first attempt at a map was atrocious, so here is my second ever map and my first ever city map. I definitely need to draw some more buildings and more trees, but the general outlay of the map is done. I'm really looking forward to all your tips and tricks on how to improve and one day maybe become as good as you guys. Especially suggestions on how to improve the water and trees would be great! Also, what do you use to scan your maps and what formats do you use to lose as little quality as possible?

[UrbaNick6]

As you saw my other drawing, I am not too far down the line from you. So if you continue with pen/pencil and paper drawing I recommend using a ruler, I hadn't in some of my previous drawings (not on this site), and the quality vastly improves. I also think having a narrative, even a short one, is so important for cities/towns since they have such little context outside of buildings being placed along a road.

I submit this humbly, and I look forward to see you (and myself) improve

[sliceofmeat1]

As you saw my other drawing, I am not too far down the line from you. So if you continue with pen/pencil and paper drawing I recommend using a ruler, I hadn't in some of my previous drawings (not on this site), and the quality vastly improves. I also think having a narrative, even a short one, is so important for cities/towns since they have such little context outside of buildings being placed along a road.

I submit this humbly, and I look forward to see you (and myself) improve

Thank you so much for taking your time to help me improve my work! The ruler is definitely something I'm going to try in my next map. As far as narrative goes, officially all that I'm making is part of one big planet on which I plan to build a whole world. Unfortunately I enjoy making maps so much that the lore side of the world hasn't really developed But I will try to update this post with some background story on the town and I will include it in future projects for sure!

[Abu Lafia]

Hey sliceofmeat1, and a belated welcome to the guild! Great to see the start of your journey into mapping. I like the overall layout of your town and can only agree with UrbaNick6 on the helpfulness of a narrative or a sort of a "golden thread" guiding your planning/drawing.
For me it always depends when to use a ruler. Sometimes i like the "not so straight" hand drawn lines better, sometimes the buildings have to have a clean cut. Again it mainly depends on the narrative or the purpose of the place/the map.

Since you asked about the trees and the river. The general form of your trees looks pretty fine. Only the details look a bit too random to me. When drawing top-down trees many people around here, like to draw the tree's details following the outline concentrically as shown in the image below.

The waves on the river seem to indicate a sideview or a isometric perspective, while the buildings and trees are clearly in a top down perspective. That's why i'd suggest to draw the river's details along the riverbanks/the stream. (Imo, the larger the scale, the more important it is not to mix up the perspectives of the elements)

treeandriver.jpg

For city/town mapsn in general, i recommend to have a look at the lovely maps by Larb. She has even created an award-winning Town Map Tutorial. It's written for Photoshop, but the linework is easily adaptable to hand-drawn pen&paper maps.

I hope i could help a bit. Looking forward to see more of your work!

Cheers,
AL

[sliceofmeat1]

Hey sliceofmeat1, and a belated welcome to the guild! Great to see the start of your journey into mapping. I like the overall layout of your town and can only agree with UrbaNick6 on the helpfulness of a narrative or a sort of a "golden thread" guiding your planning/drawing.
For me it always depends when to use a ruler. Sometimes i like the "not so straight" hand drawn lines better, sometimes the buildings have to have a clean cut. Again it mainly depends on the narrative or the purpose of the place/the map.

Since you asked about the trees and the river. The general form of your trees looks pretty fine. Only the details look a bit too random to me. When drawing top-down trees many people around here, like to draw the tree's details following the outline concentrically as shown in the image below.

The waves on the river seem to indicate a sideview or a isometric perspective, while the buildings and trees are clearly in a top down perspective. That's why i'd suggest to draw the river's details along the riverbanks/the stream. (Imo, the larger the scale, the more important it is not to mix up the perspectives of the elements)

treeandriver.jpg

For city/town mapsn in general, i recommend to have a look at the lovely maps by Larb. She has even created an award-winning Town Map Tutorial. It's written for Photoshop, but the linework is easily adaptable to hand-drawn pen&paper maps.

I hope i could help a bit. Looking forward to see more of your work!

Cheers,
AL

Hey Abu,

thank you so much for the suggestions, i will get to work with the trees and water right away!
I'm thinking about using a fineliner after I'm done drawing everything with pencil. Would you recommend using fineliners on handdrawn maps and especially on maps with the style I'm going for?

Once again, thank you for helping me!
Sliceofmeat1

[Abu Lafia]

I'm always a bit confused with english terminology on pens, pencils, fineliner, ballpoints, etc I usually start with sketching something with graphite (pencil right? ) and then tracing/finishing it with ink (in whatever form/medium). In german "Fineliner" we usually call these very common Stabilo pens, and they work really "fine" for most hand drawn mapping purposes imo. I recently bought a set of Faber-Castell ink-pens. Sometimes it's nice to have different linewidths (for details), but the one i use mainly (0.3 mm) isn't much different from the mentioned standard fineliners.
More important in my experience is the way you handle the graphite sketch. If you trace the graphite with ink and erase the graphite afterwards, the ink sometimes gets rubbed of too and looks a bit "faded".

Edit: Here is a thread where different tools for hand drawn maps are discussed.

[Voolf]

I discovered this website a week ago when I started looking into worldbuilding. Mapping looked like one of the most fun aspects of worldbuilding to me so a few days ago, after browsing the guild for a while, I started drawing. My first attempt at a map was atrocious, so here is my second ever map and my first ever city map. I definitely need to draw some more buildings and more trees, but the general outlay of the map is done. I'm really looking forward to all your tips and tricks on how to improve and one day maybe become as good as you guys. Especially suggestions on how to improve the water and trees would be great! Also, what do you use to scan your maps and what formats do you use to lose as little quality as possible?

Water
Make the border of the river more curvy (or even rugged at some places too #1). The strokes in the river should follow your river borders #2. Also adding additional thin rugged lines outside of river borders adds volume to land #3.

Trees
Border should be messy, leaves are in different sizes so try to avoid drawing the same circle/arc size around #4. The inner lines should be thiner and follow the border line in a circle #5.

Roads
Rarely even and straight, so make them curvy and rugged (but less than river) #6. Adding some dots and subtle lines inside the roads is a good idea #7.

Buildings
Outer lines thicker #8 and inner thiner #9 is one of better ways to depict them. Also the lines dont have to be straight. It is a good idea to make a sketch with a ruler and then ink it slowly by hand without a ruler. It still feels straight and looks more natural

tut.jpeg

[sliceofmeat1]

Water
Make the border of the river more curvy (or even rugged at some places too #1). The strokes in the river should follow your river borders #2. Also adding additional think rugged lines outside of river borders adds volume to land #3.

Trees
Border should be messy, leaves are in different sizes so try to avoid drawing the same circle/arc size around #4. The inner lines should be thiner and follow the border line in a circle #5.

Roads
Rarely even and straight, so make them curvy and rugged (but less then river) #6. Adding some dots and subtle lines inside the roads is a good idea #7.

Buildings
Outer lines thicker #8 and inner thiner #9 is one of better ways to depict them. Also the lines dont have to be straight. It is a good idea to make a sketch with a ruler and then ink it slowly by hand without a ruler. It still feels straight and looks more natural

tut.jpeg

Thank you Voolf for the amazing help. After reading your tips I couldn't resist and try them out on my map. I redid the lower part of the village with a fineliner, improved the roads and trees and finally tried to add some shadow. I think it looks a hundred times better. The only issue is that I used an 0.5 fineliner to do the outer lines of the buildings and a 0.2 fineliner to do the inner lines but the outer lines are a bit too big, so I have to think of something else. But other than that, thank you so much for helping me improve my work!

### Latest WIP ###
Trutena Hand sketch V2.1.jpg

[Voolf]

You are welcome.
Yeah the lines are little too thick imo. The key to change the thicknes of the stroke is to change the position of pen. Holding it amost vertical always gives the thickest line. The more you position pen diagonally and then gently draw the line will be thiner. It does not work with all pens, but fineliner should be ok.

Here is a great video tutorial about line thickness from Alphonso Dunn