The Mountains of Madness

[SikSavant]

Ok. I've done some more "learning", and I'd like to share what I have gleaned from my trial and error. Obviously if you are getting what you expect, you're pretty much set, but I felt I was looking for something that didn't ramp to a point (ridge line) so sharply.

The first thing I did was to give myself a ridge line frame work to paint on as seen in Step1. With the rough outline of my mountain established, I worked according to Pasis' tutorial, but this time, I stroked each ridge line three times in the lower and mid mountain layers. One stroke was right on the ridge line with the other two offset a bit, but still stroked in the same direction (see red arrows in Step2). I intentionally stroke "up" the ridge lines so that brush overlap (if and when it occurs) occurs in the denser portions of the mountain body. The last thing I tried was to use three brush sizes in the hi-mountain layer, but only 50% hardness. At this point I only stroke the ridge line; no offset strokes - needing everything to come to a peak. See Step3 for my final result.

While I am much more pleased with my results, more experimenting is probably needed on my part, but I'm feeling much more confident with this style now. Feel free to comment or question.

[Ascension]

I really like how that blends/slopes into the underlying terrain.