January 2015 Challenge: The Lost Village
I guess I'll start out by making a parchment scroll for this map. I've piled together some textures that I like, and drawn a ragged edge and something that vaguely resembles rolled up corners. My map will be on this scroll.
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My plan is .... er, well, .... I'm going to do this without using any brushes, only freehand drawing. I need some serious practice with my cheap little tablet and pen.
And all of you who know that I flunked Crayons 101 in the second grade, stop laughing!!
A river and the coastline of low cliffs. This is the first ever cliffs I've drawn in my life, so all you great freehand artists, please feel free to tell me everything I've done wrong. Same for the river, I guess.
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The Lost Village will be around the river mouth, maybe onto the island. I expect I'll put some mountains in the background. And I'll undoubtedly need to learn to draw a waterfall, too.
Those cliffs look fine, to me. There's only one problem that I've noticed: the top of the cliff appears to be vertically above the bottom of the cliff, which implies a perfectly vertical cliff-face. The angle of the 'cliff lines,' however, implies the cliff slopes inward, a bit. Either a vertical cliff or a sloping one can work (I tend to prefer a sloping one, as it looks more realistic), but not both.
Also, your cliffs will look even better when you add colour and shadows/highlights.
Finally, you may have flunked Crayons 101, but you're nailing Cartography 101, and that is a more advanced subject
Keen to see how this develops.
THW
Formerly TheHoarseWhisperer
The cliffs wouldn't have the exactly same height along hundreds of km of coast. On some places they would be higher and on some lower. I'd suggest to draw this upper line more rugged.
Also like THW said, the slope will not be identical everywhere - break those vertical lines a bit. As you want them near vertical, the lines will be near to a vertical but not quite and not the same everywhere.
Then adding shading will really roughen up those faces for real.
The river is fine. I draw them always much more wiggly but it is a matter of taste. Also I am surprised by the regularity of the trait - when I draw by hand, the outlines are much more irregular - rather a succession of shorter strokes, lines and curves than a long stroke where the pen doesn't leave the paper.
Btw did you find this parchment background somewhere or you created it with a random generator ?
It's my intention that the "cliffs" are vertical but low, like in the less than 50' range, so mostly vertical. The village will fill the open region along the river, so that should give you more sense of scale. This map is roughly 3-4 miles across in the foreground, and obviously much larger back in the mountains. I'm not sure what this perspective is called, but I'm thinking of it sort of like a wide-angle lens.
I'm not sure what you mean, Deadshade, about the regularity of the lines. Most of this, including the coastlines and river, are drawn in one long pen stroke. Is that wrong?
On the parchment background ... neither. I created the parchment myself, using several layers of textures (parchment and grunge) that I have saved, and then used various blending modes and opacities to combine them, until I got both the color and the grungy look that I wanted.
This morning, I drew the mountains, trying to use the techniques that many of you showed me a month or so ago in my "Freehand Mountains" thread. I still feel like I should do better with them, but time is short ....
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Just trying to decide the correct order to do things next. Shading obviously will come last, so now it's either forests or the village buildings, and since there isn't much overlap, it probably doesn't matter. I'm dreading the buildings ....
Thanks, THW, you have no idea how good that simple comment makes me feelOriginally Posted by TheHoarseWhisperer
Finally, you may have flunked Crayons 101, but you're nailing Cartography 101, and that is a more advanced subject
Keen to see how this develops.
THW
Off to a promising start Chick. Mountains look great.
Cheers,
-Arsheesh
Forests next. I have just spent two hours of my life drawing 7,812 little tiny tree trunks. Someone please tell me there is an easier way to do this.
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I don't seem to be very good at making these kind of forests fit into and around the hills and mountains very well. Any suggestions to make this look more natural would be most welcome.
My goodness.
I feel for you, chick...such forests are a pain to draw in and if there's one slip up it's really depressing. At least for me.
I congratulate you for your perseverance to finish the tree trunks. I would have fallen asleep.
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