First set of maps

[WhatTheBlazes]

These are very handsome! Very cool stuff. I'm always a fan of seeing the progression of a map.

[J.Edward]

Thanks Max, jtougas, Oktarnash, xpian [Chris] and WTBlazes. I'm glad you all enjoyed these. I am definitely noticing a preference among people for the hand drawn maps.
I enjoy drawing those and admittedly they are easier for me than the full color ones.

If any of you read this, I am curious. I have not gotten much response here or on Deviant Art regarding my color maps. If any of you have some input or thoughts on why that is or any critique of them please don't hesitate to let me know. I'm interested on improving where I can.

[Vellum]

J.Edward

Can you give a bit more detail on how you do the color conversion? I see where you said the pencils where in a moleskin notebook, but Bourmount appears to me to be photoshop colorized. No problem with that as it looks great, just I wish I could pull it off as well. I've got a thread on here where I tried to convert a pencil / ink sketch to ps colorized and it came out less than satisfactory to me.

Vellum

[syris]

Exceptional work, the detail on that building layout is incredible...

[J.Edward]

Hey Vellum. Bourmout is a pencil sketch that was scanned in to my computer then brought into PS for color work.
How I usually go about it goes like this. Once in PS I duplicate the pencil sketch layer. Then go to the background layer and fill with white.
Now you'll have a white background and an image layer with your pencil sketch on it. Like so.

Set the pencil sketch layer to multiply and then do your coloring on layers beneath that sketch layer. Like this.

I've said elsewhere that some pencil sketches and pen drawings work better than others when trying to color in PS. The more involved and full the pencil/ink work is usually the worse it tends to look in PS in color. It takes some work getting used to getting the right balance.

If that wasn't informative enough feel free to ask about something more specific and I'll try to answer/help if I can.

[J.Edward]

Thanks Syris. I assume you mean the artist cottage floorplan and sketch?
Yeah, that one was a time consuming one. Those pavers took forever.

[Meriba]

Awesome J. Edward, beautiful sketches! Though the texture of the trees' folliage seems a little bit too uniform. Perhaps a folliage more disperse would work better (inspirational example). Of course, It's only a suggestion.

[J.Edward]

Thanks Meriba. Can you reference which drawing you're speaking of? Or do you mean all of them?

[Meriba]

I'm speaking of a mixture of both styles (uniform foliage and scattered foliage). With a simple test, you'll see if putting them together works, or if it's better each style on their own.

[Vellum]

Thanks for the screenies on the Bourmout process. I'll give that a try on the Dun-Anowen sketch I'm working on atm. I did this on a trading village / outpost map last year and it was kinds of muddy lookin in my opinion. I'll go back and look at that to see how I arranged the layers. I'm Using CS3, if you're using a newer version will what you posted up work with CS3?

Vellum