You've answered your own question there - iterations. Once you block in the basic idea it doesn't matter if its quite badly wrong to start with. After that you work on the imperfections one at a time.
And its even easier when other people are willing to share their thoughts about where things might be better. It speeds up the drawing quite a lot by spotlighting the bits that are wrong.
Thanks - and also thanks for providing such useful critiques, Quenten
I've yet to do the rest - grassland and forest ones, then all those interesting variations, but now I have the basic idea right they shouldn't be half as difficult. I need to get back to the mountains, though. I want to get a few examples of each type of symbol drafted up so I can get a better idea of where I'm going with this.
This is what they look like without any painting done - just a base colour, a few lines, and a bit of rough shading.
What do you think of the isometric view? Most overland sets have side view mountains, so I am aware that these might not be to everyone's taste. I just wanted to do the entire thing properly isometric.
Heresy. How could you even consider such as thing???
To be honest, I don't know why so many mountains are drawn as a side-view. I guess, back in the old days, when symbols where real simple, just a few lines, it was easier to draw them this way. But today, we have all these styles based on the actual styles of real artists, and we still have mostly side-views, so I don't know. Perhaps they are drawn from a bird's eye perspective (The bird flies lower than the mountain peaks, so it would view these straight ahead, while everything else is from above).
Give the fact that overland maps aren't isometric themselves, it doesn't matter that much in any case, since all the symbols are all wrong anyway, but top-down symbols rarely work well for these fantasy maps.
The most interesting thing is of course how everything work out in the end when the style is complete and you can see a complete map involving htem, but right now, they do look good.
I think you may be right. Side view is also traditional and in many ways expected, since mountains have been shown side view in most large area maps for at least the last 400 years. My 1575 Saxton's map of 'Dorcestrie' (The English county of Dorset) certainly shows them absolutely flat on their sides, even though the gorgeous sailing ships in the English Channel are perfect little full-perspective drawings.
Of course, I will now have to work out how to draw the hills at the same angle. Those may turn out to have no actual hard profile line, since they don't generally have any hard edges at that angle. Trees, also, may look a bit more squat than the usual side view trees, but I'll have a play around today when I've finished painting the colours on these mountains.
I haven't settled on an actual style yet, and since my mountain drawings continually fail to please me I tried using mountains I generated in Gaea and rendered in Blender. They are absolutely isometric - having been arranged that way in Blender. Quite a lot more space is required compared to the more usual semi-side view style of mountain, and to get rid of the rather artificial round footprint of true isometric mountains I've had to make them relatively complex, which doesn't do individual definition much good. That is to say that they tend to blur into one another.
Be interesting to see some without the snow as well.
My only concern would be you may be making a rod for your own back with the near-photographic clarity of these samples, because everything else in the style will then need to match this level of detail.
I think I should be all right with the detail issue. You see, its not really all that detailed. If you look at the rock its pretty blobby. The trees won't have to be any more detailed than any other set. They just need to be realistically shaded. I can do those a lot easier than I can make mountains.
I think they are truly excellent. An interesting thing I saw in the US southwest is sand over time had blown up the side of the mountain in the valleys/draws very high up. And at a distance, the do test to merge and are not so individualistic.
I kind of like the blurring too, but it could be a problem without the snow to help define them.
I'm still working on them - trying to make them not quite so complicated to find a balance between definition and making them look joined up enough to be a range.
Comments
You've answered your own question there - iterations. Once you block in the basic idea it doesn't matter if its quite badly wrong to start with. After that you work on the imperfections one at a time.
And its even easier when other people are willing to share their thoughts about where things might be better. It speeds up the drawing quite a lot by spotlighting the bits that are wrong.
I've yet to do the rest - grassland and forest ones, then all those interesting variations, but now I have the basic idea right they shouldn't be half as difficult. I need to get back to the mountains, though. I want to get a few examples of each type of symbol drafted up so I can get a better idea of where I'm going with this.
Oh that's good! I think I have to call them finished now, and stop messing around with them so I can move on to other things.
A distraction, then?
What do you think of this rock... thing... baby mountain?
[Image_13697]
Prototype, of course
Here are some Bryce Canyon photos. No broken and onto side rocks though.
https://pixabay.com/images/search/bryce canyon/
Page bookmarked under 'Art/Reference'
This is what they look like without any painting done - just a base colour, a few lines, and a bit of rough shading.
What do you think of the isometric view? Most overland sets have side view mountains, so I am aware that these might not be to everyone's taste. I just wanted to do the entire thing properly isometric.
[Image_13698]
To be honest, I don't know why so many mountains are drawn as a side-view. I guess, back in the old days, when symbols where real simple, just a few lines, it was easier to draw them this way. But today, we have all these styles based on the actual styles of real artists, and we still have mostly side-views, so I don't know. Perhaps they are drawn from a bird's eye perspective (The bird flies lower than the mountain peaks, so it would view these straight ahead, while everything else is from above).
Give the fact that overland maps aren't isometric themselves, it doesn't matter that much in any case, since all the symbols are all wrong anyway, but top-down symbols rarely work well for these fantasy maps.
The most interesting thing is of course how everything work out in the end when the style is complete and you can see a complete map involving htem, but right now, they do look good.
I think you may be right. Side view is also traditional and in many ways expected, since mountains have been shown side view in most large area maps for at least the last 400 years. My 1575 Saxton's map of 'Dorcestrie' (The English county of Dorset) certainly shows them absolutely flat on their sides, even though the gorgeous sailing ships in the English Channel are perfect little full-perspective drawings.
Of course, I will now have to work out how to draw the hills at the same angle. Those may turn out to have no actual hard profile line, since they don't generally have any hard edges at that angle. Trees, also, may look a bit more squat than the usual side view trees, but I'll have a play around today when I've finished painting the colours on these mountains.
:-) Pun ? Why yes.
But I do indeed welcome a different view of mountains.
I haven't settled on an actual style yet, and since my mountain drawings continually fail to please me I tried using mountains I generated in Gaea and rendered in Blender. They are absolutely isometric - having been arranged that way in Blender. Quite a lot more space is required compared to the more usual semi-side view style of mountain, and to get rid of the rather artificial round footprint of true isometric mountains I've had to make them relatively complex, which doesn't do individual definition much good. That is to say that they tend to blur into one another.
But what do you think?
Be interesting to see some without the snow as well.
My only concern would be you may be making a rod for your own back with the near-photographic clarity of these samples, because everything else in the style will then need to match this level of detail.
Maybe there's really 2 potential new styles here, once I get my head around drawing mountains as well as creating them.
One like the mountains above, and one like the hand drawn mesas.
I kind of like the blurring too, but it could be a problem without the snow to help define them.
I'm still working on them - trying to make them not quite so complicated to find a balance between definition and making them look joined up enough to be a range.