Town Near a Quarry

[pyrandon]

I'll ditto that, rwaluchow! Work on it, Rob--quit being such a slacker!

[Badger]

I agree... I want to see some more!!

[RobA]

A few learned lessons.

1) Don't sketch on graphpaper.
2) Inking on screen is hard, even with a tablet....any pointers?
3) Don't bother with anything other than the finest tipped pens.

Since I couldn't eliminate the graph lines well, and I suck at tablet inking, I picked up a fresh pad of tracing paper and some cheap pens (Faber Castell PITT pens in the S,F,M,B 4 pack).

Here is where I am now (1/2 size scan). I will move on to colouring using GIMP....

-Rob A>

[pyrandon]

This is looking very nice, Rob. I can't wait for the coloring, because I think that will really make all the features pop! Awesome fun.

(And no, I have no pointers for inking on screen--I can't get the same smooth feel with my tablet either. I wonder if that is true on a high-end tablet, too?)

[RobA]

First start at colouring. I am using Don's city palette, and it just feels bleah to me.

Think it is time to look at other maps and start borrowing colour schemes...

-Rob A>

[Kagehito]

I like how you drew the water around the rocks, makes the map seem more "living."

Good eye for detail, and the colors look awesome thus far... Not really screaming "bleah" to me, but I guess that just a personal taste thing.

Keep up the good work!

[Badger]

lessons learned while trying to ink with a tablet:
1) use a hard round pen with no pen pressure or dynamics.
2) slow and steady wins the race. patience is a virtue.
3) like inking with pen and paper, spin the canvas around so that you don't have to turn your wrist at an awkward angle. This was actually harder to do if you didn't stick to 90° turns, as the canvas got bigger and bigger and bigger if you used the arbitrary rotation command... I found that creating an action for 5° turn, 1° turn helped to quicken the process of turning it. And cropping the image when it got too big. Pain in the neck? YES... but the benifit was that the inking was easier and smoother than trying to ink a line that I had to turn my wrist a certain way which would cause a mistake or less than desirable look. Also, when rotating, it's easier to ink lines that are generally in the same direction while you have it rotated is better than having to rotate multiple times to that same degree just to ink one line here.. and one line there...

Hope that helps... actually.. I hope that made sense....

This was in PS, btw... I don't know GIMPS commands... sorry.

[The Cartographist]

RobA - Just a thought, but maybe your bleah feeling has to due with the fact that the majority of your colors are greens and blues. Maybe adding some more gray, brown, and tan would liven it up. Maybe even some reds or oranges (somehow) thrown in to liven up the palette.

[morandir62]

Rob, how did get the background so white after the tracing? My scanner picks up all the stray pencillings from the orignal and the tracing paper is an off-white that when I attempt to clean it I lose some of my lines.

[RobA]

Rob, how did get the background so white after the tracing? My scanner picks up all the stray pencillings from the orignal and the tracing paper is an off-white that when I attempt to clean it I lose some of my lines.

it is just a matter of playing with contrast, brightness and gamma (or curves, the tool I prefer). And the occasional use of the eraser. If the paper is uniformly off-white you can also adjust the grey point to compensate.

-Rob A>