Map Tutorial

Just like the mountains I traced the basic shape of the forests on a fresh sheet of tracing paper. This time rather than going for a craggy look I'm drawing in more cloud like clumps. Of course if you're dealing with a less temperate climate I'd urge you to look at how pointed some of the trees from that region are. Like palm trees with their long angular fronds. This was a temperate region so the oaks and the birches are fairly bushy looking, and the occasional pine only comes up in some of the smaller details.

Where you've established the shadows are on your mountains should also determine the way we detail our trees. It's kind of a high angle from the south-east side of things, so it'll be the south east side that we add some trunks. As for the sporadic lines in the tree tops, same goes. If the south-east corner of the forest is the closest to our vantage point, then adding these lines should try to serve that illusion of depth.To help that depth we're going to make sure we only draw tree trunks on the south east side of things.And lastly, some shading, just like the loose hatching on our mountains, some faint lines that keep towards any place we might see more of the underside of the trees, or where taller trees might be casting a shadow.

Just like the detail on the mountains, when it's all in place, trace it with our fine liners. This time I used a 03, where there was the most shadow on the lines around the forest. A 01 where there needed to be solid lines, but less prominent lines (highlights and trunks) and a 005 on the hatching, which you might have guessed by now.

TBC: That's as far as I got with this tutorial today, but I'll keep going with it through the buildings and then the color and texture, but I have to admit there really isn't much left beyond this if you take out all the repetition of steps. You can see here just how many sheets of tracing paper I used, drawing almost everything as a separate object to be manipulated in illustrator later.

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