Fictionalised Catskills map

[ravells]

Thanks Hai, this was exactly the sort of advice I was after. The look and feel of the map is based on one by Van Loam in 1907, which uses hatchures to show hills. The Van Loam map didn't show vegetation. On old Ordinance Survey maps, the tree symbols are usually tiny and the forest itself is delinated in colour (but this has to be black and white). I'm quite stuck as to how not to obscure the contour lines - putting the contour lines over the trees looks horrible.

I used the tree thing to make the tree symbols but they look a little pixellated when I import them - I have to say I wasn't entirely happy with them either so your spotting it has made me want to fix the problem. Autotracing them into vector smooths them though. I'm waiting to hear further comments from the bloke I'm doing the commission for and will post the next WIP when I've got his feedback.

@ Treg: Thanks, sadly I don't think that Yog Shogoth County is going to make it into the final version!

[Hai-Etlik]

Thanks Hai, this was exactly the sort of advice I was after. The look and feel of the map is based on one by Van Loam in 1907, which uses hatchures to show hills. The Van Loam map didn't show vegetation. On old Ordinance Survey maps, the tree symbols are usually tiny and the forest itself is delinated in colour (but this has to be black and white). I'm quite stuck as to how not to obscure the contour lines - putting the contour lines over the trees looks horrible.

The best I can suggest is to drop the symbolization using discrete trees and just use a patterned/shaded area, maybe with a smaller number of tree symbols spread over it so that they don't intersect the contours.