hand drawn / ps trading village

[mearrin69]

Here. I suppose you should have a little rep from me for this pretty awesome map. Nice work.
M

[- Max -]

Max – Oh the river water, how I hate that color LOL. I don't have the concept of opacity / texture combinations down. I’d love to try some textured elements and shadow effects. I feel like I spend more time hunting down how to do things than actually working on the map .

If either of you have good examples, point me in their direction, I’ll take a look. I really want to get better at this.

Hi there, not sure if this will help you but I made you a quick tut on some fast ways I sometimes color up my hand drawn rivers. Maybe it gives you some ideas

[Vellum]

Awesome Max!!! thanks for the mini tutorial, I appreciate it.

[- Max -]

No problem Vellum, Glad you liked it.

[Vellum]

Ok messed with a border here. Some issues once I imported it in, we see opacity change from lower left to upper right. border layer is the top most layer atm. I assume this opacity change is because of the overall color changes in the layers below? Anyway to correct this? Open for suggestions here on how to improve the border look, both technique and design layout. Compass rose showing is just a place holder until I work it out alittle better. I also need to go in and erase layer coloring overlap, I think this will help the overall washed out appearance it seems to have.

[Blaidd Drwg]

I love how there seem to be more and more pretty hand-drawn maps around, these days. This is certainly a good example of one.

[Vellum]

Thanks for the seal of approval Blaidd Drwg, appreciated.

Add a side by side on the first page of posting to show the changes LOL

[Freehand 5.5]

I'm a big fan of hand drawn maps, too. Very cool project.

The river is a bit to dark and to strong in color. Water always reflects the sky. Perhaps a lighter and more greyish blue would look more naturally.
The trees look a bit to cloudy. They could be more defined at the edges.

The mill is to small and has no court. The mill is a building, where all the peasants come to mill their grain. Big carts. Heavy sacks. Many people. Long queues ... (there is a german proverb that says: Who comes first, mills first.)

But despite my nitpicking I like that map very much.
The hill is great. The houses are plenty and very detailed and please my dry old eyes.
Its a nice piece of work. Hopefully not your last.

[mearrin69]

Hi Vellum. I sent you a response to your PM but I can't tell if it went or not so I'll repost my advice here:

Actually it's a pretty darned good map and it seems you're getting the hang of PS pretty well. My suggestions on this map would only be stylistic: 1) draw and ink the trees, roads, and maybe some of the other natural features, and 2) cut back on the blue saturation in the river, maybe to the level of the pond. Beyond that I think it's good to go!

I haven't really done that many hand-drawn maps like this but I've got some general pointers: 1) Scan the map at the highest resolution possible and then open that file into PS and save it as a PSD, 2) Promote the resulting "Background" layer into a real layer and set its blend mode to "Multiply", 3) At the bottom of your layer stack either import a parchment or other interesting (light) texture or make a white (or other light-colored) layer, 4) create layers above your base layer and paint into them. If you have an underlaid texture then paint with lower opacity to let the texture show through, if white then you might want to use a higher opacity. Try different styles of brushes...there are lots of "natural media" and "grunge" brushes out there, and these can help you add texture to the painting, 5) I like to add a layer to the very top of the stack containing a grungy texture (a dirty stucco wall, rusty metal, or something similar) and then put it on "Multiply" mode and play around with the opacity. This will give you some additional texture. Try different modes such as "Overlay" to see if it looks better...sometimes bringing in the color of the grunge texture a little will help tie the whole thing together.

Hopefully you find some of this useful. You draw great maps...PS is just an afterthought if you've got that kind of talent. Good luck!
M

[Vellum]

got the PM mearrin69 :-) thanks for the comments between yours and torstan's comments ya all are gonna make a mapper outta me yet!! I seriously fight photoshop, I'm one of those folks ya just gotta beat over the head to get it right LOL. sometimes there has to be a little pain to progress!! I thank all of you who have helped to push me, the support on this place is awesome.