Gigantic Waterfall

[Anna Robinson]

So, for one of my fantasy novels, I have to draw a huge waterfall. Like, mega mega high. I have done a forum search but cant find any suggestions on how to go about this. Any help welcome!

[Jaxilon]

I'd say look at Niagara and maybe some of the falls in British Columbia and look at how they change as they get farther from the top. A really tall waterfall would probably basically turn into rain near the bottom depending on how far we are talking.

Not knowing exactly what you mean by Huge (is it wide, is it tall?) it's hard to say but I think if you look at some big ones in the real world you can get an idea. I use Google Earth for that kind of stuff all the time.

[Deadshade]

I just happened to draw a rather big waterfall that you can see here : http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=32996

The governing idea about drawing a waterfall is strands.
Water doesn't fall down as a sheet but in several strands because the edge is irregular so that the flow has irregular velocity. The larger the waterfall, the more strands.
The height of the waterfall plays another role. As the water falls, it is slowed down by air friction and separates in smaller and smaller pieces of water. The strands get larger as you go down and less dense. They also start to swirl.
For a very high waterfall the bottom would look misty because most of the strands would desintegrate during their fall.
Basically what counts for the aspect is not the width and the height alone. What counts is the ratio width/height. The width governs the flow mass and the height governs the degree of desintegration.
So a thin but tall watefall finishes like mist at the bottom while a wide but low waterfall will look very solid with strong strands.

The way your waterfall will be drawn will depend on what your ratio width/height should be.