Hand-drawn WIP: Braid

[jshoer]

I'm starting a quick little project: a village centered in and around a braided river. I'm doing this by hand with pens, and will color it in pencil.

On the actual piece, so far I have nothing but a border and a title!


...but I will also share my initial attempt to scratch this out, which should give some idea of the style I'm going for. (You can see that I already changed the name.)


The idea is to have some more cartoony representations of forests, buildings, bridges, etc all around and in the braided river bed, right near where the river flows out into a larger body of water. That sketch river bed is, I think, too symmetric, so I'll be paying close attention to aerial photos of braided rivers. (Some of the best references for what I want, so far, seem to be the Platte River in Nebraska.) I will probably also plop a small delta at the outflow.

Clearly, I am also studying how to draw cartoony buildings on pylons. I was trying to play with a very oblique angle and exaggerate the perspective, as well as doing some attempts to make the roof more bowed, but I think that was probably biting off more than I should have. The uppermost building seems like the best idea so far.

I'm also trying new forest styles; in particular, I am doing something that I think will allow me to differentiate deeper forests and jungles by adding under- and over-growth.

Finally, I promise to post more! Really!