Aaaaand another update, since time is running out, so I'll have to put some effort into it.
A good day of drawing and painting makes one pretty tired, but some things cleared up. I decided to go for the DF ASCII map legend for the settlements and sites after all, which had the pleasant sideffect of being alot quicker to do than actually painting loads of little towns and such. The positions are not 100% accurate, and I realized only now after letting the map rest while I ate dinner that most of the site icons are crooked, probably due to me sitting weirdly while drawing.
Again, this is why making maps by hand can be very troublesome, and also rewarding. You have to live with the mistakes, but every mistake also adds to the uniqueness of the map itself. That being said, I'm kinda bummed about it all. I also messed up one of the human towns, which got filled in since my brush was too wet. Reapainting it would be a very messy project, so I'll let it stand.
Here I have added the rivers and streams that would be big enough to be intresting on the map. In the detailed map, there are LOADS of smaller streams and such, but I decided to leave them out. Much of this map is marches and swamps as well, so it would be littred with still ponds and small brooks anyhow.
This is the first sign of whats to come. The first elf settlement I drew. I was so proud I took a picture. The symbol as well as the color is original from the game, and it looks pretty good, I think.
Forest retreats galore. A quick shot of the workspace as well.
Even more forest retreats. I decided to make the capital retreats a more shiny kind of yellow, and wth a bigger symbol. I kinda failed the first one, to the right, but the second one, in the middle of the map, stands out nicely.
I just added the human towns and cities. The failed one is the one closest to the top, which is just a blot rather than a circle. The capitals are bigger and with kinda crosshair-like protrutions on their icons. I am not terribly pleased with the looks, since all the other icons are more elaborate and foreign, while the human towns are just a circle, but I stuck to form. The circle is the original ASCII icon from the game and the blue color is from the legends viewer.
Here are the goblin towers added. They are a very dark green, as from the legends viewer, which I had hoped would get lighter when it dried. It didint, but the almost black looks kinda sickly if you think about it, which suits those little dwarfnappers perfectly. The main towers are bigger than the others. There were loads of smaller towers, with just a hundred or less inhabitants, that I didint add in, since they fell below the population limit for what I wanted to draw. The main towers have 3000-5000 inhabitants though, so they are pretty well defended.
Finally added the dwarves and their little gate-like icon. The capitals are larger, and there is also a slightly larger fortress slightly north of the two capitals that was just large enough to warrant a slightly larger icon (5000 inhabitants)
And last but not least, the final result of a days hard work. Grass for the grasslands around the humans have been added, and I am pondering if I should add rolling hills as well. The vast marches and swamps have gotten some blochy pools that I'll decorate with reeds and grass to make them suitably damp and wilderness-like.
THe next step will be to fix the swamps, which will be a tedious task, but rewarding in the end, detailing the mountains and forests with, well, mountain peaks and trees, respectively, as well as the small patches of badlands and tropical shrubland/savannah. Finally, there may or may not be labeling of the major cities and such. And I will have to do the glaciers. I still have no idea how to do those. I might have to buy more watercolors. Some of my coloring choices come from my quite limited little box of watercolors, something I rather like, since nothing brings out creativity and uniqueness, as far as I can tell, as having limits on what you can do or the materials you have to work with. But having an icy blue or white would really really make my life easier with the glaciers.
PS: Thanks to whichever mod that fixed the title of the thread. It was very embarrassing.
