"Fantastic Beasts and how to draw them - tutorial on D&B" Topic

I always thought the most intriguing aspect of historical maps such as the Carta Marina are the fantastic beasts and odd creatures depicted on them: Humanoid figures without heads, sea serpents swallowing ships whole and dragons terrorising villages. Many of these depictions are based on Roman and Greek myth or on tall stories told by sailors over an ale. But how can you add such beasts to your own maps and how do you go best about coloring the map?

In this short tutorial I will show you one way of drawing such beasts and digital colorisation techniques. I already covered the basics in another post that gives you an introduction to hand-drawn maps. In this installment we draw a much more detailed map and use layers of translucent color  instead of layer masks to bring the map alive.

So come along and explore the Margravate of Greifshold, but be warned that we will meet dragons and sentient mushrooms in long forgotten ruins, serpents deep below the waves and fierce tree guardians deep inside an autumnal forest.

Fantastic Beasts and how to draw them – tutorial on D&B

Very cool maps!

Xin

Than you Xin! I hope to draw more maps depicting the area to the west, east and north, so that I can combine them to much larger map of the entire continent.

Wow! I'm definitely bookmarking this.

I have no experience whatsoever with any of the programs used, but now I'm curious to give it a shot in the near future.

Thanks so much, Peithetairos!

Dan

Ahoi Dan,

you can also use Gimp (OpenSource version of Photoshop). All you need to read up on is Layers and Brush Presets.

Everything else is pretty straight forward. If you are more of an analogue type you could also color the map using water colours or acrylics with a glaze medium.

I tried my hand o it and it was not too bad. Only catch is that you cannot easily correct mistakes.