some shaded relief scribbles...

[Ilanthar]

Just a bit more for done in the third style.

[Ilanthar]

And some more again.

[kacey]

This looks great Ilanthar! I love the background color like this, and that it looks like some one drew it with a pencil and shoved it in a drawer for a hundred years. I really, really love how this is coming together.

[Mouse]

Kacey's right. Its looking beautiful.

I wonder if you took those dark ridge lines out it might look even better?

[kacey]

if you took those dark ridge lines out it might look even better?

I couldn't disagree more, those dark ridge lines are what gives it it's charm.

[Mouse]

Oh... er.... sorry *apologetic grin*

[tilt]

Looking really good Ilanthar, the reduced size is working and I like the pallette

[Straf]

This is great Ilanthar. I've been experimenting with relief shading styles too. I've put them into a couple of challenge maps, more specifically the Harpy's Silver Tongue one. It's in my albums.

I start by roughly drawing in contour lines in a sort of faded brown colour then I add more density where they're closer together, lighter where they are further apart. I use a dark colour in multiply mode. Then I start adding highlights on the other side using a light colour and screen mode. Then I hide the contours layer.

[Ilanthar]

Thanks to everyone who's looking my scribbles !

By Mouse
I wonder if you took those dark ridge lines out it might look even better?

Actually, those lines were just a sketch for the shaded relief properly speaking, so I first tried it without showing them. But it does look better with it (slighltly blurred), so I kept them.
And will keep them.

By Tilt
Looking really good Ilanthar, the reduced size is working and I like the pallette

Yup, the reduced size helps... But I have to do a lot of separate files for my poor computer!
As for the palette, it's just a base right now, but glad you like it.

By Straf
I've been experimenting with relief shading styles too. I've put them into a couple of challenge maps, more specifically the Harpy's Silver Tongue one. It's in my albums.

I've seen this! I've (and keep doing it) looked the work of different guilders here. And my good old atlas too.
I'm working from my "weird" mountains of my original Eldoran map as a basis.
The funny thing is that I don't have used any "light" just now. Only shadows.
And I'm not sure I'll add lights.

And a bit more.

[Straf]

Personally I don't think it needs any highlights. The folds and faults of the land are prominent with just the shading going on. The broken lines also give the ridges more definition than contiguous lines would. It looks more natural.

One of the things I did on the Harpy map was determine which contour lines would form the tree line and which ones would be the snow line. Let's say I said below 7 (a nominal value) would be trees then I'd put that as the maximum on the sunny side - the less sunny side, NW to NE, would be lower, say between 6 and 7. If the snow was 9 and above again it would be higher on the NE to NW section.