First contribution - Port type village (fantasy-ish) extremely rough WIP

[abhorsen950]

My first contribution! Felt the need to begin work on something after getting a lot of inspiration from work I was browsing through after work so I got sketching.

I wont lie to you all, was slightly nervous about posting this because I must admit it's really a terrible start, extremely rough and needs a lot of work to it but I'm beginning to come a little unstuck and need all you great folks out there to help me.

(fingers crossed this attachment works)

I had a picture in my head of this out lying (but not to far out lying) island which is a port/village. Connected by two bridges to the rest of the mainland. The quite awful and extremely rough lines at the very bottom resemble the dock/port area of the island. So first things first if anybody could point me in the direction or give me some good advice on create a dock like area would be greatly appreciated.

I also found myself struggling with the general island/land lines, they are far to smooth and was wondering how you guys achieve yours. The only bit I felt confident with was as I started drawing actual buildings, nice and a straight with a ruler, it's the only thing that looks acceptable.

Secondly, areas of large shading are woodland or forest type areas so if any of you could give me advice or point me in the direction of advice on drawing woodland areas by hand that would be greatly appreciated.

Thirdly, I wanted certain parts of the island, especially closer to the coast to be raised up slightly, without colour or shading is there any good ways to show variation in the gradient of terrain.

Finally off to the left is some general farm land, other than distinct lines which isn't terrible in my opinion, is there anyway to highlight it as farmland better without colour or shading again.

On the whole, I'm not overjoyed with the sketch but we all have to start somewhere and it's a WIP so plenty of work will be done to it, I'm even looking at uploading it and working in colour/digitally for the first time. It would also help if I drew it it with a better pencil and have better supplies around. Something else I'll be getting my hands on.

Look forward to hearing from you all,
Regards,
Steven

(P.s - Only just realised that it's uploaded the image rotated and can't seem to change it back so my directions don't exactly work, fingers crossed you can still figure it out)