Returning to the Forums

[Pacio49]

Hi everyone! Adam here. I joined back in 2015, or so the website told me when I logged in and checked my account. It's been a minute.

I had a milestone birthday this year in August and decided that instead of hopping to a new hobby or pursuit, I'd go back to one of the areas of interest where I've already done a good chunk of the proverbial 10,000 hours toward mastery. And I returned to fine art, updating things to work with a Cintiq monitor tablet and to use my Adobe Creative Suite for more than just Acrobat for work. I believe wholeheartedly that what gets applauded as 'talent' is usually just 'persistence' and 'practice' over many hours, and that if such a thing as 'talent' exists, it doesn't come into play until you're hitting Mastery-level from your practice, and not until. I take a very 'everone can do it if they practice' approach, and find it serves me well even when the art looks like crap on the page and the artwork isn't working.

Anyway, from a very young age, even before discovering Fantasy RPGs back in the time of Red Box/Blue Box D&D, I drew fantasy maps. While adults were hobnobbing over coffeee and dessert at the family social gatherings, I was happily learning how to draw forests and mountains on lined notebook paper, coming up with worlds in my imagination even before I conceived of how such a daydream hobby might be entertaining for anyone other than me. I've always drawn maps -- since college in the early 90's I've been running RPG groups of one system or another, and I always took pride in my maps, even though I was using the assets of others. With the return to fine art as a digital pursuit this year, I decided to go back to the original pattern of drawing things by hand, using and developing my own illustrative style.

I've shared some maps I did in Campaign Cartographer here before, but here's an illustration for the original homebrew world I've built out in the past for games, and now I am using as the setting to help me practice my Fantasy Illustration, Character, and Concept Art skills I've been studying for a few months now.

The world is called "Fryth Anvor". I've got about 93 hours into this map so far, and I'm just about done with the inking. I'm working at a size of 24"x36" (2:3) but I will add a key and border art/compass rose illustrations and render the final as 18x24". I'd love to eventually post a portfolio this year and start taking commissions. I'm even more looking forward to doing regional maps, city maps, etc. by hand, and accompanying them all with the fantasy illustrations and environmental concept art to actually illustrate the world. Or teach myself how, at least.

I'm happy to share WIPs. I'm hoping to have it done and dusted by Halloween. Touching up final bits of the inking this week, then by next, starting on building up the color 'washes' for the under painting.







Anyway, it's good to be back and focused on cartography in a different way, these six years on. *waves*

[Bogie]

Welcome back Pacio49! Thanks for sharing some cool maps!

[DrWho42]

hello there! welcome back!