City of Klawsden

[Valterink]

I'm currently working in a commission for a client! Would love to show you the process, I use traditional techniques to create my maps, this one is going to be shipped to the client after finishing it!
Critique and commentaries are welcome!
NOTE: this is going to be a grayscale map.

Here's the beginning stages:

For this commission, the client asked for the paper to be tea stained, so that's what I'm doing in this picture ( I love this process)
Next, the client provided me with their version they had previously put together using cartography software (I didn't ask which 'cause it doesn't matter to me which you use as long as you are creating something that you love), and I sketched the city's districts. This map is going to be a perspective view from the east, so north is to the right side of the map. Next thing post I'll share how I created the border frame for the map, in which I decided to include lore details.

But before sketching the frame, I had to block out the city's districts, streets and general layout, mainly the landmarks!

Thanks for stopping by, I'll update as I make progress on this piece!

- Valterink

[wminish]

This is looking really good so far, I look forward to seeing it progress.

[Valterink]

Sketching the City of Klawsden

I'm gonna go a bit back to explain how I sketched each district. For those interested in learning how to draw highly detailed cities using perspective (almost isometric, I wasn't strict on this, I was aiming for it look more like real medieval maps), it all comes down to shapes. As you will see in this series.

Here's the client's provided map for this commission:

Original city of Klawsden; north at the top

It was made using a digital tool for map creation for which I don't know its name.

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I started with the heart of the city, there's a "Central Park" location with an Amphiteater at the edge and
a dense forest. Deep inside there's a giant ancient tree that seems to embrace the whole city.

Central Park next to the hill

This is an early sketch, the client made a correction because the forest wasn't big enough, and the amphiteater was supposed to be at the edge, near the streets and the central hill and castle.
I blocked this central hill with the castle on it, well not a castle per se but like a kind of big mansion for the ruler of the city.
(As you can see I have defined other landmarks already, those cylinders are really evocative aren't they? What could those be? )

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Look from the harbor

I also started the base of the main building of the city, a cathedral. By the client's request, this building had to be depicted bigger than any other and that's why I decided to show the city using this perspective, we are looking from the east to west, north to the right of this map.

Next to this northern wall, I needed to depict the slums, using the brazilian favelas as a reference. So I started with a small encampment next to the slums, before drawing the district. I decided to start with this district because I knew that I had to do high detailing on it to successfully convey the favela reference, and it would consume most of the commission timeframe.

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I'll show you the high detail slum sketching process –which required really high detailing from my part – in my next post! (I can do even more detailing, but extreme detailing was beyond the scope of the commissioned piece and would have take so much more time, I finished this piece in a month, almost 30 hours of work, but we'll get to that soon!
See you and thanks for stopping by!