Maffaton City

[Daelin]

How did you achieve that look?

The water was made with 2 layers; first a blue base layer set to low opacity over the parchment layer, then a second layer with the grungy horizontal lines on top of that, also with low opacity. The lines around the shores were made by selecting the blue base layer and contracting that selection and stroking it, doing that several times over, again with progressively lower opacity. Now that's the basic techniques. The exact opacity values, the exact color code and how to achieve the grungy effect on the water lines, now that is done by endless tweaking. Exactly how long that takes depends on how much of a perfectionist you are and also maybe your level of OCD.

Spit artists!?

I guess you haven't read China Mieville? Perhaps my favorite author. His Bas-Lag universe is total brain candy to me. Spit-art is an actual thing in those books. Art made by a race of beings that look entirely human, except their heads are something close to a scarab beetle. As in this:

He also has giant moth monsters that feed on sentient thought, a giant interdimensional spider that speaks in freeform poetry, cactus people, steampunk cyborg war rhinos, a pirate city made of thousands of connected ships floating on the seas. The. list. goes. on.