Good points, Coyote... Thanks

I guess the reason I haven't posted anything here yet, beyond the starting landmass is... well.. for one, I haven't had anything else to show lol.

But further, to me... I'd rather let people critique something that's at least approaching what I'm after. This way they look at it and "get" where I'm going with it. If what I'm drawing isn't even close to resembling what I *want* it to look like in the first place (which is the case right now), then the feedback - while helpful in itself - would be guiding me in a direction I probably don't want to go in...

Not sure if that makes sense.

As an analogy, say I want to draw a really great apple, but what I upload looks more like a peach. The feedback I get would most likely be on "how to make it look like a really good peach" which, of course, wouldn't be very helpful to me drawing an apple... Of course, apples and peaches are absolute, definable things. Cliffs, mountains and such aren't quite as "specific"... which makes it more difficult.

What I'm finding the most trouble with, I think, is the clarity of things. Like, when I look at those sample maps from my original post, everything looks so clear and "crisp" where it should... and blends in really well with the background where it should. The cliffs just "blend" right into the map... it looks like it should. I can't get that same effect. Every time I draw it, it either stands out like a sore thumb, or it's so blended that you lose the effect... I'm having trouble finding that middle ground, even playing with different shades, different pen pressures, different layer blending modes, etc. It's completely eluding me right now... and again, I'm usually pretty good with that kind of stuff in PS.

Hopefully when I do finally find the right combination, I'll be able to remember what I actually did so I can replicate it...