September 2019 Challenge: Butterfly Fields Harvest

[Kisachik the Wanderer]

Hello friends. I'm doing another top-down map, like the first one I posted here once upon a time. Someone said they'd like that one better if it was coloured. Alas, I'm horrible when it comes to colouring line work. It takes forever and there's always too much criticism from my inner perfectionist, making it painful to finish.

So when things aren't working, you know it's time to throw away your life's work, and give up.

Or try a different approach. Like, maybe, put colors in first? Crazy idea? I won't know until I try it.

Here's my first "sketch":



Just colours.

[Kisachik the Wanderer]

And here it is with a farm.

### Latest WIP ###



Still very rough at this point, I don't know where this is going yet.

[ChickPea]

You're off to a very nice start!

[XCali]

I really like the painterly feel.

[Chashio]

This approach seems to be working very well. I love how you're bringing it together

[Kisachik the Wanderer]

I don't know if I should keep working on the composition, or start rendering. It can take forever and I keep catching myself doing things that this sketch doesn't need. What do you guys think?

### Latest WIP ###

[Chashio]

I think it's beautiful and you can start finishing it

[bkh1914]

I agree with Chashio.
The composition looks good and it's time to move towards completion.

[DrWho42]

loving the colours! a very impressionistic start to boot

[Tiana]

Eh, that's how most of my sketches start, as a blob of colors. Not really crazy to me, depends on what you're aiming at, art based on form versus art based on pallet versus line versus shadows, honestly there's so many ways you can start blocking out an art, none of them are wrong as long as you learned from it. I'm biased towards liking it but I suppose you may feel it's indistinct at this point. Ironically enough I do understand what it's like to be able to do a nice painting and do nice lineart and be frustrated melding the two. Coloring lineart is just not the same as doing a painting. I set up my black and white maps very differently. It's "fall" enough in its overall essence, so I think you'll find your next step by progressing to rendering in some finer details rather than fussing forever. The thing with painting a map is sometimes it evolves in the painting, you just gotta let it take you along with it and see what happens.

My only good trick to share is to use lighting in the same way you might use lineart in the final stage. The thing that pulled all of my paintings that I liked together in the end was a few dabs of bright lighting to distinguish zones. Just because black is off limits doesn't mean there isn't a way to sneak some crispness in, and you'll find that in the highlights. If you let the region around the buildings become a muddy dirt color or have some green bits of grass, this will help distinguish between the houses and the ground, since if you fill in that whiter area it'll lose its negative space which currently holds those shapes together in the middle.

This is a fine sketch to keep painting details over. Don't get stuck thinking about it. You're learning to paint maps, so just do it, and if you hate the result, do it again next challenge until you are happy with your results.



Edit: Yes, try something new is a great response to that depression 'throw it all away' voice. Much better response. At least you get something new done instead of nothing done and end up expanding your skillset rather than wallowing in self-pity. It's the artist curse. The more we know, the more we know we need to know and the fun is then hopefully found in the dinking around and learning to do new things, or else in the practice. You'll be able to take what you learned making the color scheme for this map and use it for coloring lineart techniques later on so don't despair, ultimately this IS making you a better map artist even if you feel a bit stuck on your usual style right now. You'll get it back. I never lose an art style forever, only for a bit while I reconsider my techniques and try new things. I actually lost my painting skills for a couple of years I was so focused on getting better at inking though. I stopped practising.

It's a good color swirl. It feels nice and "fallish" without being cliche.