digital/rendered art Mountain peaks.

[Neptune]

I would like to ask for some honest, constructive feedback. I've been working on a map for my roleplay Blackberry Falls: Zombies. I have made maps before, for two of my other roleplays Craethiel Kingdom and the yet opened Utopian Curse but the map I am working on is a different style than the ones I made for them. @Temaelrin was kind enough to buy me a new graphics tablet since ours broke and I've been testing some things out. For the map I am making, one of the things I needed was mountains but... I've never drawn mountains before. My thoughts are that these will be top-down mountains as if looking at them from above. As I said; I've never done this before. I am a complete noob and I'm looking for some honest feedback. I've already gotten some feedback from @Kalvoras Vertal and I have two images based on his suggestions.

The first:

This is one of my first attempts.

The second:

For this one, Kalvoras suggested that I soften the ridge lines to blend it better together. I admit I did rush this one a little since Temaelrin and I were going on a walk but, even so...

What are your thoughts on these, and does anyone have any suggestions?

[PinkKitten]

So...I'm not going to pretend that I know much about this at all, but one tutorial I just watched uses a lighter brush to make more light/shadow differences, and he also seems to use multiple sizes/shades of brushes to kind of build things up and blend. Here's the one I watched that looks kind of like what you want to do, maybe? :3 To me, the casual layman, it looks a lot like what you've already done except done a couple times over >.< 

[Neptune]

Lol that's the exact tutorial I used. Admittedly that bottom one is only my third try at this xD

[PinkKitten]

Nooo T_T I was hoping it would be helpful...To me it just looks like he did it more times than you did which makes sense since you were busy.

[Neptune]

Think of it this way; Great minds think alike xD

I'll try doing that on my next try and this time I'll make sure that I have plenty of time to do the shading. The ridges are pretty easy to do, really. Especially since the shading does kind of look better in the first image. More darker/lighter whereas I kind of feel that the second one looks a little... flat? I dunno. Might be alright for smaller mountains though.

[PinkKitten]

Yay!! I'm a great mind now #NeptuneApproved

I think for the first one, maybe the difference is that the guy in the tutorial did brushing over the thin black outlines, which gave it that more blended effect Kalvoras was going for. So then you still have the really strong shading from the first one but the black outline sticks out less? 

[Neptune]

I can try to do that. One problem I did encounter is due to the background, it sometimes wouldn't allow me to lighten/darken easily. But I felt it was best to practise on the kinda ov canvus I will be using for the Zombies Ashaea map. Perhaps try ridgelines that are a mix between the top and the bottom. Darker for when it's a taller peak, perhaps.

[Aura]

 

Hm... I'm not much of an artist, so I can't really say here. But, perhaps you should emphasize the shading on the mountains a bit more to give them more depth? Ultimately, I think that second picture is great, albeit a bit subtle. If you're looking for sharper mountains, you might not want to darken the shadows a bit more. 

[Neptune]

Yeah that's kind of why I feel that the second image looks a little 'flat'. As if the mountain is quite small and thus hasn't got as much shading/lighting. When I've got the time, I will do another and post it up in here.