January 2021 Challenge: The Fallen Lands

[wminish]

Hi wmnish!

Your dragons are super cool! I am wondering, what kind of tools do you use? What paper, pens or markers, coloured pencils and so on. The colours look very saturated, and seem to have a wax crayon texture. It reminds me of a set that I have that are so beautiful that I'm unable to use them without drawing the entire rainbow.

I'd love to hear about your process, you have a unique style.

Also how do you capture your work? Do you use a scanner, or a digital camera?

Hi Kisachik
Pictured below is pretty much my full inventory of materials for this project.



In terms of my process; I start by pencilling in my design, usually with a 2H pencil. After this I ink in all the lines with the dip pens and black ink (this is usually the most time-consuming part of the process), when I'm done with the inking in I go through and erase any remaining visible pencil. Finally, I go through and apply colour with my range of colouring pencils, I have been using Faber-castell classic colours for a while now but I'm gradually moving over to the Polychromos range as my current pencils run out and as I want to increase my range of colours. In terms of achieving the colour saturation I have found that the choice of paper is very important; I use 200gsm cold-pressed watercolour paper as this has really good colour pickup, and the ink doesn't bleed or soak through it.

To digitise my work I scan it using the pictured scanner. In terms of scanners this is nothing special, my wife and I needed a printer and I also wanted a scanner so this is the cheapest colour printer/scanner available from warehouse stationery. After scanning I usually use the built-in "Photos" application in windows to rotate and crop the image and I will often also darken it a little bit and maybe increase the colour saturation slightly as the scanner sometimes washes out the image a little bit.

I hope that answers all your questions, I have been thinking about writing up an article about my process and how it's changed over time for my website so I may post something more detailed there sometime in the next month or two if I get time.

[Tiana]

Awesome results!

[- JO -]

Very nice map !
And the theme is very well exploited !

[jshoer]

Great work!

That sounds a lot like my process, too! I often use Derwent watercolor pencils and paint over them afterwards, which smooths out the texture more than you can get by rubbing with your finger or a rolled-up bit of paper. (I might suggest trying to smudge out some of the texture on your rock tablet to make the text more legible, though it's OK now and has a good old-and-degraded look to it. You could lean into that with some extra colors for lichen and such.) The big disadvantage to watercolor pencils is I end up with warped paper after, so I usually photograph my work instead of scanning.

[wminish]

Great work!

That sounds a lot like my process, too! I often use Derwent watercolor pencils and paint over them afterwards, which smooths out the texture more than you can get by rubbing with your finger or a rolled-up bit of paper. (I might suggest trying to smudge out some of the texture on your rock tablet to make the text more legible, though it's OK now and has a good old-and-degraded look to it. You could lean into that with some extra colors for lichen and such.) The big disadvantage to watercolor pencils is I end up with warped paper after, so I usually photograph my work instead of scanning.

Hey thanks for the advice jshoer. I rubbed over the stone tablet section with some paper and the text looks clearer now. I might also lookup some pictures and potentially have a go at some lichen or something like that, that's a good idea.

### Latest WIP ###


I had heard that warping was a problem with watercolours (I think this is also why they make the watercolour paper so thick). I get a little bit of warping with coloured pencils but nothing too bad.

[Greason Wolfe]

That came together nicely. Could very easily picture that as part of an adventure module.

[Kisachik the Wanderer]

Thanks for sharing! I love all things art supplies and creation process.

Although the challenge's not over yet, this one's my favourite so far.

[Chashio]

That is such a fantastic map!

[Adfor]

Unique as can be, really nice job wminish. I particularly like the shipwreck, and the castle at the far top left that is ominously left unnamed. Awesome work!

IR

[- JO -]

A beautiful map, with lots of details that add meaning to the dragon theme.
I really like the dragons, especially the one that comes out of the water and the one that is coiled up in the village. The names of the dragons are also very well found!