Fall Forested Canyon, Adept & Expert

Welcome back, Adepts and Experts! Man, it's been a while. I don't know about all of you, but the holiday season is absolute madness for me, I feel like I haven't taken a breather for a month. I'm looking forward to getting back to maps though (it's weird how much you look forward to regular life after a long break), so let's talk about this week's one, the Forested Canyon!

1. As always, I like to start my maps with very rough sketches. This step is really important as it helps me get a feel for the map, and although nothing is set in stone at this stage I usually stick pretty closely this my sketch after this step. 

So, the idea behind this map is that there's a deep canyon with a healthy amount of plant life at the bottom. This is easy enough to put together (trees, rocks, bushes, and grass are my bread and butter) but I found it surprisingly difficult to make an interesting layout with such little space. In the end, I decided to throw realism to the wind and make a layout that has a bit of a battle-arena vibe. Yeah, it looks unnatural, and yes there are way too many level of elevation (so many that it confuses the eye), but damn it if it isn't interesting.

2. At this step I put down the map's outlines and the details within them. If I'm careful at this stage and make sure that each block of color is surrounded in an unbroken line, I can make the coloring much easier by using the paint bucket tool to drop in color (rather than going in an painting the bottom lair by hand).  This alone has made it possible for me to make maps in ~3 days rather than 4, which in turn has set me up for making commissions much quicker (and has opened the possibility of making 2 maps a week (crazy)). I don't think I've talked about this before in these posts, so forgive me if this is ridiculously simple stuff that doesn't need saying. 

I think the only parts I drew differently this time were the outer rock walls. Going into this, I knew I didn't want to draw the walls' details all the way to the edge of the image. I did some research and found artists who had done this well, simply allowing the details to fade off, implying great height or solid rock, and I thought it looked excellent. It's a small difference, but I think it is a nice improvement that stops me from filling space with  unnecessary details.

3. Coloring grassy maps has gotten rather easier since I've settled on a concrete palette, no longer do I just pick whatever colors feel right. Instead I use a simplified version of my Roadside Clearing map, without all the effects and shading, which I pick colors directly from. It's really shaved down the time I spend agonizing over shades of green and brown and it ties my maps together with a consistent palette. Honestly, in hindsight, I should have  put together a standardized palette a long time ago, but better late than never I suppose.