July / Aug 2016 Lite Challenge: Cave Hideaway

[Falconius]

So I had the perfect idea for this challenge, I remembered a long time ago going on a tour here in Israel where there were these caves apparently used by Jewish rebels to fight the Romans in the Bar Kochba revolt. It turns out I live right near some (there are actually a bunch of these caves) so I decided to take my dog down for a walk and to go explore them. It was terrifying. You crawl through tiny tiny tunnels carved into the rock, into claustrophobic rooms in the pitch dark (can't go there without a flashlight, some nutbars use candles, for a more "authentic" (read "terrifying") experience). But the one I chose turned out to be a perfect fit for this challenge. So here is my bandit cave loosely based on the tunnels I encountered there:
### Latest WIP ###
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Basically it's carved into the side of a natural bell shaped cave maybe 7-10 meters tall from the bottom to the top (the top is actually open). This cave and the tunnels themselves have varying levels, but I eliminated that because I couldn't think of how to represent it clearly. What was perhaps most interesting was how important pigeons were. There were at least five huge caves in the immediate area into which hundreds of literal pigeon holes were carved. There were some more caves like this that are inaccessible.
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I'm really unsure as how to represent the pigeon holes given that they occur on an inward curve high up the walls. The pigeon caves all have an open top where the pigeons can fly in and out.
If you are wondering how easy it is to hide such caves this is a picture of the entrance one I have sort of mapped here.
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Just imagine that with out the sign post and with a bunch of natural vegetation around it. Honestly it's pretty easy to accidentally fall into one of these so they put up fences and warning signs. Perfect hideout for banditos.

[Mouse]

That's a really fascinating back story - more so because its real.

Could the pigeon holes be done as tiny side rooms, perhaps with little nests in them to give the general idea?

EDIT: I suppose you could represent the different levels of the caves by making the deeper ones more dingy and dark, and the upper ones brighter and more warmly lit. I notice the stone there is quite pale, you can use a wide range of colours for an effect like that - cooler, darker and bluer shades of grey for the deeper caves, and warmer more yellowy or orange shades of more whitish-grey for the upper caves?

[ladiestorm]

This idea to s really cool! I love the fact you are.basing this off of a real place! You have a good start, here... I want to see where this goes!

[mixerbach]

Wow, what an awesome story! Actually, what awesome stories! The caves themselves have a cool backstory and then your story of exploring them was cool as well. With all of the "awesome" and "cool" floating around these caves, there's got to be a pretty fantastic map waiting to happen!

But seriously, I loved reading about the caves and hope to see your map really bloom into something amazing. An idea for the pigeon holes: why not show a wall of the pigeon holes (like the photo you shared) as an illustration? The map I'm working on for this Challenge includes a waterfall which I wanted to show from the side, while keeping my map top-down, so I decided to try and illustrate the waterfall instead. It isn't done yet, unfortunately, or I'd direct you there to show you what I mean! ;-)

Regardless, looking forward to seeing where you go from here!

[ThomasR]

I'm ravenously looking forward to the next step !

[Ilanthar]

Very nice idea!

[Falconius]

Thanks for the encouragement everyone.

### Latest WIP ###
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(It's a photo just because it's so much quicker to do than scan it in, I'm going to have to scan it in two pieces and stitch it together for the final transfer to the computer.)

So did some inking, not much else though. I'm trying to decide whether to name the rooms or number them, I'm think I'll just go with naming them directly, the reason being I plan on filling in a lot of detail with the colour work rather than line work, I did some pen experiments for sleeping blankets and such and could not get a good result at this scale. I also went with a preliminary sketch of the pigeon roost cave but not really loving the result so I'll have to think how to fix it.

[Abu Lafia]

Very cool idea, and awesome to hear, you can explore your reference object personally The linework and the hatching to indicate the ground looks great so far! Are you going to color the piece digitally? Looking forward to see this develop.

[Mouse]

My goodness. You draw by hand on paper! I not only take my hat off, but I bow most deeply.

I am very impressed!

[ReverendRover]

It's looking really good, I like the image showing the passageway and it's size (especially for the D&D part of my brain), gives you a nice feel for the place. Others have said it but the whole idea of those caves really is awesome, an amazing real-life setting to map out! Looking forward to seeing how you take that detail into the map.