Suggestions Needed.

[Harold Harmon]

I've been working on a map to hand out to my D&D group of the Chaos Scar. The versions I was able to find were all low quality so I set out to recreate it. I am happy with everything except the dead trees in the terraces. I've tried a few methods and everything I have done so far has left me feeling that they look more like cracks than trees. I asked my wife what they were and showed her the map and she replied "rocks". For my purposes I could just go ahead and use the map as is, but I don't want to.

If anyone has suggestions/tutorials/examples of top down dead trees/forests, I would appreciate the help.

One idea I had and have not tried yet is to just do a version similar to what I have done for the live areas, but without coloring.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Chaos-Scar-Map-handout.jpg

::Edit

Trying this out. I like it better, but still not 100% sure it's the best way to go.
Dead-woods.jpg

[Midgardsormr]

Knowing what they are, it's easy to see the symbols as dead trees in the first image. However, your main forests use a more textural approach rather than symbolic, so I think your idea of coming up with something similar to the live forests in a dingy grey-brown is a good idea. And perhaps instead of the tufty canopy lines, they could be spiky to represent the leafless branches.

You may also gain some benefit from a Google image search on "forest fire aftermath aerial." That's obviously going to get you photographic reference instead of illustrative, but it might serve as inspiration.

[Azélor]

It look good but I also think your burnt forest need improvement.