hand drawn / ps trading village

This is something I've been playing with, again to learn PS. It's a small trading village near borderlands of population / desolation. It is run by a manor lord who has fallen out of favor with the current powers that be. Even though thrown to the neatherlands he recognized the value to the land to raise sheep. He established some dye houses and weaving houses to process the wool and dye it for trade back into his lands and for export for sale. The place has become a favored place for caravans heading into the rugged realms just beyond. Just for RobA it has a butcher, baker and a candlestick maker LOL!!

Ok here's my process for this. freehand sketch (regular 8.5 x 11 copy paper) to develope the general feel for the town based on the above concept. scanned in sketch, loaded into PS. set up a layer system of water, grassland, trees and buildings. Thats it so far. Colors are massed in per the appropriate layer, I don't care if they overlap etc at this point. Some stuff looks ok, some stuff sucks ;) We can see the background layer which really help define the hillfort mound, but I've really got to figure out how to do my contour method in PS. I will individual draw in the building etc. Comments / crits as always welcome.


Attachment 50322 Attachment 51052 just a side by side with the latest version to see the overall change

That looks great, I really like the penmanship.

For contours, why do anything different than what you've got? The slope lines in pen are great, and the colour treatment looks a bit like watercolour washes so far

That looks really good, I don't have any recommendations for contours; they look better then anything I could of done.

I have to agree with the others, the contours look great already, some things are just so difficult to imitate digitally... I would seriously consider keeping them. ^^ I will be watching this thread closely. I cannot wait to see what the finished map will look like. :)

I have to agree with the others about you contours...they are great and I think that they would only add to a finished PS product. I too will be looking forward to your progress on this one...as always.

Contours aye there's the rub :( these are on the background layer, so is all the other trash, notes etc, so when I turn off the layer - poof LOL no contours (per the inking anyway). I made a copy of the background layer but when I erase on the copy layer I get the transparency checkerboard in the drawing. I haven't at this point figured out how to eliminate this issue. I like the way the contours look, I just haven't figured a way to get PS to cooperate! Actually without the background ink work this is really absolutely nothing, just a piece of junk, so I need to work this out.

I'm a PS newbie but I came across the issue you describe and solved it by either adding another layer filled with white colour below the layer you are erasing from (and later making them one layer) or tried erasing (with a brush) with an actual colour sampled from your sketch... There are probably easier ways to do it, maybe with the clone tool?

Hope it helps :/

Yes, make a white layer underneath it. Also you could try setting that background layer with the contours on to multiply to reduce some of the noise.

What about copying and then pasting the contours onto a new layer. Select by color with minimum threshold choosing white and then delete.

Remember that I have no clue about PS, so this might be way out in left field....in the next town... but it might work

Wirelizard, eViLe_eAgLe thanks for the comments, appreciated

Lyandra, Larb, Korash Thanks this white layer under the copied background layer does the trick, well once you remember to fill the layer white LOL. I'll put the contours on another layer in the revised edition, ya I'm changing the layout atm MUHAHA I really didn't like the location of the hill fort so I'm redoin the layout. Update maybe a little slow coming I've got some things to address before I get back on this. Thanks again for helping solve this, frustration level at times wants to make me just forget it!!