How do I draw forests?

[Spudnik]

In all of my fantasy maps, I like to draw lots and lots of forests. I am not the best at doing this however, and I have tried some online tutorials. I was wondering if anyone had any little tips for me. Another problem I run into is when I am using GIMP, my borders are not the best... If you have any tips, just post them and thanks.

[Azélor]

There are many ways to do it. What style you are interested in?

[Deadshade]

You'll find in my signature a tutorial about all possible forest styles. Just choose the style that fits best the map you have in mind.

[SteffenBrand]

Made a tutorial myself, too! Check it out in my signature, hope it is helpful and / or the style you need =)

[Spudnik]

There are many ways to do it. What style you are interested in?

I like evergreen and redwood forests best, although I do include deciduous as well.

[Spudnik]

And thanks Steffen and Deadshade.

[arsheesh]

Hi Spudnik. I think Azelor's question wasn't so much about the type of trees in the forest as much as what "style" (e.g. hand drawn vs. photorealistic) you want to represent the forests. I've also got an older tutorial for making forests in GIMP in a photorealistic style. It is aimed at "regional" maps as opposed to town maps.

However I'm currently tinkering with another realistic forest style more suitable for town maps such as the one I am currently working on. I haven't yet written a tutorial for this new style but if you are interested here's a quick walk-through on how I created them (note I'm using version 2.8 of GIMP, this method won't work on prior versions). Basically what I'm doing is painting in the forests with a pattern using the clone tool and then adding a Bevel & Emboss and drop shadow layer effect. Here are the specific settings:

I used this pattern (you'll need to change the file type from .jpg to .pat and save it in the patterns folder of GIMP):

Forest Summer 6.jpg

I am also using the following custom made grunge "hose" brush (a brush that uses multiple images). You will need to unzip this and save the hose brush to the brushes folder of GIMP:

Arsheesh's Tree Hose Brush.zip

Then with the above pattern selected in the clone tool (make sure that under Source the pattern, and not your image, is selected), I use my custom grunge hose brush to clone paint in the trees. Here are the settings I use for this (you may need to experiment with these to see what works best for your map).

Tree Screen Capture.jpg

NOTE: setting the scatter to 2 will create strokes in which the trees are clumped very close together, but I like to leave some small forest clearings and the occasional spaces between trees. I also like to clone in some individual trees here and there.

Now we are going to add the following Bevel & Emboss layer style to this tree layer (note that I tic the "Use Texture" box and use the same texture used above as the tree pattern):

Bevel & Emboss settings.jpg

Now I add a drop-shadow (here are the settings I used):

Drop Shadow Settings.jpg

The result should look like this:

Trees with Bevel and Drop Shadow.jpg

Now this looks alright, but we can give the forest a bit more depth by adding another layer of trees on top of the one we just created. So for this new layer I'm not going to clone in whole clumps of trees, I'm just going to clone in a few trees here or there on a new layer on top of the trees layer like so (note that I've turned down the opacity of the bottom trees layer to 50% for this so as to better see what I'm doing; I'll turn the opacity back to 100% once I'm done with this):

Trees Top Canopy.jpg

Now apply the same Bevel and Emboss style shown above to this new layer as well as a drop shadow style to this layer (but turn down the opacity of the drop shadow to 15-25% or so, otherwise the shadows will be too dark). The end result will look something like this:

Trees Final Result.jpg

NOTE, you may wish to play around with any of the settings above, and or try new things.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Chick]

Spudnik, at the top of your CG page is a link for Gallery. Go to the Picture gallery and start looking at maps. Most of them have forests, so study each style until you decide what type of forest you want. There are some with individual trees, large masses of trees, and some just drawn as a blob with some treetops. Once you have figured out what you really like, then come back here and ask again and people will give you ideas about how to do that kind