This was for a dungeons and dragons game-module, the client said he wished for the map to look "authentic" as if drawn by a real cartographer inside the game world.

I work with photoshop and a Wacom tablet. I hand-draw directly in software. This is a step by step process to creating the next illustration. This illustration is the result of over 15 hours of work.

Now an illustration like this is very intricate but when starting from the ground up you don't start with a very awesome thing. This is how I started this one.

That's just the main features and main linework that will help me lay down the details and later on the colors. I start by detailing the houses, the bridge and adding some semi transparent lines for the farms on the south.

Next I go ahead and detail the river and the forest. This is time consuming and kinda boring but necessary for an ok looking tree texture.

Another time consuming and intricate part, detailing grasslines. Notice how they are drawn in circular patterns that suggest the locations of terrain elevation. This will be further defined in the coloring and shading step.

Now I start with the decoration work. I added a margin, compass and title. The title, "Galifar's Hollow" is taken with inspiration from the kingdom of Galifar of the D&D Eberron campaign setting.

I now change the background for a wood colored parchment texture.

It doesn't look like real parchment because paper-parchment once it is really old, looks stained and used. To create the dated look I use soft brushed that look like splatters and ink stains. I set different opacities for differentiation and also use overlay layer masks to stain the "paper".

It's finally time to start using real colors. I'm using watercolor wash color and brush techniques. Here I started with the map's features. The main houses and the path, in autumn hues.

Next the ground and grass. Real grass and vegetation gets red in autumn at different rates and that's why the grass patches are not uniformly colored. But this is late autumn, hence the really orange-red hue.

My last step is coloring the trees and adding some number labels that are relevant to the RPG product where this illustration is going to be used. I also added some faded legends with a font type that pretends to be draconic language.

I'm a graphic illustrator and I focus my work in tabletop RPG games like dungeons and dragons.

I'm new on Steemit but have great aims to share my work in posts like this one where people can see illustrations be created from the ground up.

Send some love, likes and follow me for awesome cartography illustrations.

I do this full time and I love creating fantastic locations !

If you're interested in my work, take a look at my Patreon page

There is a pledge level that gives access to my photoshop source files, in case you wish to see my workflow and learn in the process.

Derek Ruiz