Vallee Mystique : Rivermania Challenge

[Greason Wolfe]

As those of you following the Monthly Challenge Threads may already know, my efforts towards the March Challenge (Rivermania) were side lined due to a conflaguration of family emergencies that consumed the bulk of my attention and time near the challenge deadline. This was a disappointing thing for me as I was rather enjoying the challenge for both the nature of the challenge and the opportunity to explore styles and techniques that I'd never used before or hadn't used in such a long time that they might as well have been new to me. Fortunately, these emergencies have finally passed and, as promised, I am back to work on this challenge so to speak.

I can't say exactly what it was about this challenge that inspired me, but it most certainly did. That's always been one of my problems. Brief inspiration that seems to fade as I get closer to finishing a map. That hasn't been the case with this map, however. In fact, with each step forward, I've become more inspired and more determined to finish this map. Although it will be far too late to include it as an entry for the March Challenge, I have every intention of posting the finished product (as well as the rough drafts leading up to it) here in the WIP forum as well as in the Finished Maps Forum.

One of the good things that has come out of this is the fact that I've been able to take a couple steps back and re-approach this map from a more logical point of view. One of the things this called for was a slight restructuring of the base textures I was using. I wanted a little more variation from land to sea as well as in the rivers. With that in mind, while keeping the same basic land texture, I re-approached the sea/lake texture and decided to expand a bit on the shallow areas along some portions of the coast. The end result is shown below.

With a bit more time to work on this now and, hopefully, all the family emergencies settled, I'm hoping to make some steady progress on this, but I won't promise anything given the nature of the last few months for me and mine.

Hope everyone enjoys and, as always comments, criticisms and suggestions are always welcome.

GW