Hand-drawn town WIP

[palehorse]

Thanks all! My electricity was out most of the day, so I got a lot of work done on this one to while away the hours, and got caught up on some reading to boot! :-)

Awesome - nice seeing hand drawn work like this! I'm too lazy to actually paint in watercolor, nice work.

I'm probably going to cheat (well, it's not REALLY cheating) and use watercolor pencils for the bulk of the coloring. It's been awhile since I did any traditional watercolors, and I'll need a few months of practice to sharpen my skills before I try using them on anything I actually want to keep!

I picked up a Niji waterbrush (one of these: http://www.dickblick.com/zz051/33/ )a few weeks ago, though, that's made it a heck of a lot easier to practice with. I need to get a few more, actually, in different sizes, now that I know I like them! They're SO handy! I'd like to get one just to fill with something like a neutral gray or brown and add some washes to my ink drawings.

[pyrandon]

Great to see you here again, Butch--and that comment is underlined by me ten times more when you come bearing hand drawn maps! I can't wait to see the end result, and I hope it inspires others here (myself included) to set aside the mouse for a little while and remember how much fun it is to scratch on real-live paper!

[palehorse]

So here's the latest. I'm really, really unhappy with how fiddly I started making the fields. I let my mind wander while I was working, and my hand just sort of went off on it's own natural tendency to render the heck out of things. Chalk it up as a learning experience, I suppose.

I don't have a good way to fix it on the original (I don't have any opaque white that won't mess up the look of the watercolors) so I'll just try to clear up some the fiddly bits in the field in Photoshop later on. I'll probably go ahead and render out the rest of the fields, though, so the original will at least have a consistent look.

[ravells]

What...your pen doesn't have a ctrl-Z setting??

[palehorse]

What...your pen doesn't have a ctrl-Z setting??

I wish! I'd have needed a LOT of levels of Undo, though.

[Baziron]

This looks so awesome. I feel encouraged to draw some more, ever since I also tend to predraw with pencil and then ink over - but it'll take some practice before it looks like that.

[pyrandon]

To be honest the fields do seem just a teensy-tinsy bit busy, but nothingt hat distracts the eye. The roads, on the other hand I think drag the composition down, dragging away from the buildings and the layout. That's not to say it's not a great map (it is), just one part that I personally didn't care for as much.

So what's next? Coloring? I can't wait--this is a very pleasing map-in-process!