Map Tutorial

Advanced Mountains

So maybe you're getting good at those mountains, or maybe you just want some further elaboration on the technique. No problem.

Wide mountain ranges can be a pain to do with one steady ridge line. Especially if it's a wide stretch of mountainous land. So you can draw multiple interconnecting ridges and make a really vast stretch of mountains with many meandering peaks, it's just a matter of finding a few natural starting and stopping points while you're blocking them out.

With a number of ridge lines laid out I'm going to detail them just like last time.

Another tip for making those ridges look good; consider the angle we're looking at these from. When the line runs up and down that ridge is running north south to our vantage point. When it's winding to the left of right, that ridge is displaying more like a horizon line. When it's horizontal make your jags push up and down on the page— like a horizon. When your line is heading north or south, temper the jags a little more but when they do show up try to push them left and right. Here's an example:

When we start adding the detail to a more complicated mountain range like this one, we need to consider a little more closely which lines should over lap another. Also, if you want your mountains to look steeper make these detail lines that run out from the main ridge line run more North/South on the page. The more left and right they are the more gradual the hills will look.

Letting the lines of some peaks disappear behind the ridge line really helps give the mountains depth. Also, with multiple ridges letting the end of one fade out behind another lends to the illusion of a background and foreground.

The space between two mountain ranges like in the lower right corner of the example above, also makes for a great place to tuck in a river or a valley if you have such things on you map.

To move on to doing forests in this style KEEP GOING this way.