17th century Gothenburg in watercolors

[Lingon]

Hello friends! Feels like forever since I made a WIP thread… which I may have said before… but here is one! Yay!

So I started planning a city map a couple of days ago, and today I got some work done. I'm making a map of my home town, Gothenburg in Sweden, as it looked in its… well, not its infancy maybe, but… teens. Or something. Gothenburg was founded in the early 17th century as a planned fortified city. No original structures are left, most of the fortifications are gone, the canals are turned into streets, so not a lot of the origins can be seen anymore. But I guess that's what makes it fascinating to me. That it's gone.

Anyway, the reason I'm making this map now is because my dad often talks about how sad it is that everything was torn down and that the canals were filled, and his birthday is next month, so I thought a nice big poster map of our home town could be a decent gift. Therefore this will be slightly different to my usual method; I almost always label maps digitally, and most of the time I do quite a lot of tweaks, add separately painted elements, etc... but I don't want to give away a print, so I'll be doing everything by hand this time.

This is how far I've come. I've based this on various maps of the early city, but none that I found could show how the inner yards (that the right word?) of the blocks looked like, so those are improvised based on contemporary maps of other cities.


I was thinking I would ink this with red for the building outlines, blue for the shores, and black for other stuff, and use a pale but colorful and happy color scheme. But maybe I'll go with more muted browns, greens and grays instead and keep all line work black. I'll do some color sketches next, try some stuff out.

[tainotim]

Very cool Lingon. I'm studying cultural heritages at the university in Gothenburg, so I have had my fair share of insight into the local history. Have you been on a "history walk" around the town? It's quite interesting walking around, envisioning the towering bastions and walls. Regarding older maps over the town, there is a amazing isometric city-map over Gothenburg at display in the Museum of Art. Don't recall what time it is supposed to depict, but you might draw some inspirations from it

Will definitely follow this one! And great start

Cheers,
Tainotim

[Chashio]

Cool gift! And a very nice beginning. I look forward to seeing how it goes.

[Ilanthar]

Looking at your first sketch, I'm eager to see the next steps!

[Lingon]

Thanks guys, great to have you on board
Tainotim, that's awesome and I trust you'll be correcting any mistakes I make I haven't been on a history walk, maybe something to try. The map sounds great, I do love isometric city maps… Is that the museum at Götaplatsen?

My color ideas, quickly photoshopped. Currently leaning towards the grayer one, but looking at them again now, I think maybe something in between, with a touch more yellow, could be worth trying?


By the way, if anyone's wondering, the paper size here is 50x70 cm.

[tainotim]

Yea exactly, that's the museum! (And free for everyone under 25 I think!) The color samples look great. I think a combination of the two would be nice. The green tone in the "gray" sample, and a combination of the red and gray for the structures (aka a darker/grayer red). A touch of yellow could definitely work!

Cheers,
Tainotim

[ChickPea]

This is looking great, and what a fantastic idea for a gift! I'm looking forward to seeing it come together. Agree with Tainotim above that a combination of the two colours might be best.

[Lingon]

Great, thanks for the feedback! Something like this then maybe? I'm pretty happy with this one actually!

[Lingon]

And now, for real. Inked the lines and applied the large areas of color. Here's a section of it in its the current state.


My idea for the city blocks is to paint the outlined shapes in the dark pink tone of the color sketch without distinguishing individual buildings or roof shapes, in a way similar to this old map of Stockholm: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Suède_1650.jpg, so light centers and dark edges, and greenish inner yards. With that style, do you think it'd look odd if I marked plots inside the blocks with a dark green color? A bit like in this map (huge image)…http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...dgren_1885.jpg

[Chashio]

It would probably work... it's a little difficult to say exactly what you're looking at on paper vs. what we're seeing post-scan, but it sounds like a good plan.