August entry: Touch of orient

Lets see if I can remember how to do this.

This is a roughed out sketch of what I will be attempting to do over the next few days to get it ready for the deadline.

The cloudy corner is an idea I had for the border. The rest of the map I hope to be able to lay out in the birds eye view.

I think I'm going to back out a bit and see if I can get some of the blending into the landscape at the edges rather then setting a hard wall as the town perimitter if that works better.

I'm also thinking that if done right the verticle banner style of labels of structures would fit better, but as I understand it the map labeling is up to the sponsor this month.

I also hope to try this with a bit of water color this time, or at the very least ink. For a more finished look.

Well Rovingjack, you are a brave person. The deadline is in a couple of days, so let's see what you can make of this. The first sketch certainly looks promising!

okay I'm a bit vauge on the deadline for sure. I hope I've got about another twenty six hours.

At this point I'm going to do up the map borders. give it an ever so delicate hint of color and shading. then ink the lines into a finished form.

Basically breaking up and detailing the blocks, destinguish the water from the roads, roof from building faces and add some grass and foliage to the whole thing.

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Not bad! I like what you have going on there.

If you sleep like I do, you'll get it done in time for the deadline no problem :)

The deadline is sometime on the 26th. Since Gandwarf is running this it might be like noon his time (Netherlands). It could be midnight, too, so I'd try to get as much done as you can by tomorrow night and leave minor things to update along the way on the 26th. Looks pretty good though :)

It will be midnight for sure... I am away from my keyboard most of the day ;)
It might even be the morning of the 27th... which technically is the 26th for the US. Yes, I think I will definitely close down on the 27th, so you American continentals can work at least part of the evening of the 26th on it :)

okay this is essentially done. I started by trying to stay as close to the swath of map layed out in the examples and you can sort of see the area running from the castle to the river.

I hope I didn't take too many liberties though.

All told it's about six hours work. Would have been less but the inking was made harder by my crappy supplies.

I'm calling done, though I'd like to try to get the cloud border I mentioned around this by tomorrow evening.

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I like that.

Keep working on the clouds, it really brings the map a good feel. (I actually thought they were mountains at first :))

You said watercolour at first, you switched to inks then? I should break out mine.. though I don't ahve a working scanner right now.

these are mountains. the clouds I was referancing is the little corner in the first sketch, I'm making a border of them to go around what you see above.

it is done in water color, but to set the black border lines for all the small details required darker then pencil. So inking the fine lines was what I was referring to. Part of my annoyance was having to give up on my fine tip pens for a stupid Bic to get the ink to go down.

though the line was too wide and I think ruined the torri gate in my opiion and the lines look a bit too sketchy for my liking.

Neat stuff...