July/Aug ‘19 Lite Challenge: Bleak Bones Bay
At the start of my learning curve but I like to challenge myself.
I took two segment of the second provided picture (hope that’s okay?), the small Islands from the top right section and the middle portion of the left side section.
I have redrawn them on brown paper (sized A4) and started working on a pirate inspired regional map.
Vegetation will require some practice since it’s not the regular type of trees (pine or deciduous).
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(Will need to work on my photography)
Welcome to the Challenge Marc! Nice work hand drawing the map shapes.
This challenge is about 2 things, 1 Having Fun, 2 improving your mapping skills. We are usually lenient about any "Rules" for most things. Our usual answer is the voters will decide if you didn't follow the guidelines, but I have seen them give a lot of votes to a couple maps that didn't fit the challenge description.
My Battlemaps Gallery http://www.cartographersguild.com/al...p?albumid=3407
Been working on the challenge for two days now and it has been alot of fun.
I started inking the coast lines with brown but the contrast with the paper was to low for my taste so I retraced them with black (will look into a new set of finliners that will have more contrast as I do prefer a more ‘natural’ colour to do the inking)
I also added the base of the border and rose.
Named a few areas and learned that naming is not my strongsuit hahaha.
To define the use of color is gave the ocean two layers of blues.
The end color will be depend on the color of vegetation (still working on the style before placing that).
### Latest WIP ###
Ps. I think this is my 5th post so I hope i can continue without training wheels now 🤗
Thank you moderators, for your time and patience!
Hehe, congrats for your 5th post, welcome aboard, and good job on this challenge ! It's gonna be a lovely map
Thank you very much Beee!
Btw, really like you artwork, your style and use of color reminds me of the art David T. Wenzel ☺️
Last edited by Marc; 07-30-2019 at 03:48 PM.
Been a productive day. Moved my desk outside into the sun and forgot all about time....I am really enjoy this...allthough I am turning into a forum Troll...Blergh!
### Latest WIP ###
It's looking good. Very organized and clean looking. I like the nice flat colour shapes, it gives it a nice graphic/print design aroma without actually going there.
Hi Marc. The map looks OK and has some interesting detail. The lettering could use a bit of touch up, but this map is already my favorite because of that cute pig on the path. You mentioned you'll need to work on your photography, but the picture is pretty sharp, which is the most important. A lot of issues can be fixed digitally, as long as you have a good base image.
Thank you very much For the kind comment Falconius ��Originally Posted by Falconius
Thank you for the feedback Kisachik, the pig sends her ‘Oinnk’ aswell ☺️
I purchased a ringlamp before taking the latest photo and this is allready better than my first two.
I see what you mean with the lettering, was hard to decide what to make of it without loosing readabillity. Got any ideas/suggestions?
Right now I’m not capable to do anything digitally I’m affraid (pc puffed its last breath).
But this is my first map and I am loving this creative path so I am sure improvements will come slowly, with practice and time while staying on the (enforced) analogue path ��
Any advice and feedback is very welcome though, it might speed up the improvement ��
But
Hi Marc. I do have some ideas on how to improve the lettering. It'd be the easiest to do digitally, alas, rest in peace, PC. Hand lettering requires tons of practice, but you can improve a lot by just using some guide lines. It's easy enough to do when your letters just go left to right, but there are ways to also create curved lines. The most important thing is to keep your letters at a consistent height. Even master calligraphers use guide lines in their work.
If you have some tracing paper, you can place it over your map and draw a base line for where your letter bottoms should be with a pencil. Then follow that curved shape to draw another line above at your desired letter height. If you are very precise and the lines are at a consistent distance throughout their lengths, that's great, now you can put in your letters. You can try many variants and overlay it on your map to see if you like it. After all it's all on the tracing paper, and not on your map, so it's like another layer that you can just redo and discard as many times as you need. Also no erasing on our precious map.
If you don't have any tracing paper, you can still use regular paper and a light box, which will make both of them transparent. If you don't have a light box, you have daylight + windows= a vertical light box that requires some tape to hold your work in place for a bit, but still worth the extra effort. If it's always night outside... move closer to the equator.
Now, what to do if you can't draw the same line consistently for some of those really curvy paths... I believe you wouldn't have this problem, but just in case, I have a tip for that too. It'd require another piece of paper and tracing your first line on the extra paper sheet #1, then moving the sheet #2 perpendicularly and tracing the same line again. Easy!
After you have your new and improved text, you can transfer it onto your map from the tracing paper. To do this turn your tracing paper over and redraw your inverted text in soft pencil, then place the paper in the desired spot on top of your map the right side up. Now when you draw on top of the letters again the soft pencil will transfer onto your map giving you a guideline that you can ink if you wish.
I hope this helps. I really enjoyed writing these tips, maybe I missed my calling as an arts & crafts blogger. Or maybe I just like to look like an expert on something.
Also is the pig on an adventure by any chance?
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