Between the continents : a topographical-styled map

[Veldrin]

Hi there.

It seems that I can't finish a map without starting new ones... I wanted to draw a mountain land, highly raised, in "level lines" kind, topographical style (as a first attempt).

Thus here is a new project of a continental piece which links two continents, as central america does, but much more landlocked between chains of mountains. I don't know yet if it'll be part of a country, an entire country, or even several ones...
By the way I tried to figure out many interesting and strategic places.

The surface water contour is in blue, representing the sea level. Then come dark lines, each of them are 500 meters steps (until something like 4500 meters height).

If you guys have some advices regarding this kind of "level lines" style, it would be appreciated

ps. There are some light lines giving this dirty texture, but it's only the pencil lines which will be erased at the end.

[Veldrin]

Here's a little update. I couldn't guess how long it would be to draw those level lines before starting...
Anyway I hope I'll finish the lining soon, then i'll colorize it to make something clear and obvious, because I assume that it's not easily readable.

[Meton]

Looking good! It's easy to see that this has been time-consuming, and it looks impressive even in this stage.

It's a bit difficult to read now, I agree. My eyes see some holes in the mountain areas but I guess they are hills. I'm sure it will be beautiful when it's coloured and ready!

The best advice I can give you about level lines is to look closely on real world maps with similar style and scale. Another thing is that in many regional maps the level lines are not with equal intervals, but with small intervals at low altitudes and long intervals in high altitudes (for example lines for altitudes of 0, 100, 200, 500, 1000, 2000 and 4000 meters above sea level). This makes the drawing of mountains easier, when you don't have to draw so many lines near each other, and also makes the terrain in low altitudes to come out better. However, this is a decision you have to take before drawing any lines.

Interested to ask, what is the scale of this map, for example the width of the area shown?

[Veldrin]

Thanks Meton

Yes I already thought about irregular intervals, but I didn't know that's something widely used. It's a nice advice to make it easier. I will maybe consider new levels to fit better the map, even if the scale would not be totally corrected ^^ I think about something like 200, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, 6000 meters high.

To answer your question, I wanted to draw something about 1000 km from bottom to top of the page, which means 707 km large (according to A4 format). I assume that's probably not realistic. Thus I can reduce a bit the scale, perhaps half of those mesures.
Since it's a random map (I don't know what it represents), I still can adapt the scale.