how to draw forests on a map

If yous want to learn how to brand a map in more than detail—or you lot'd like to brand ane but can't due to Affinity's pricetag—then accept a wait at my new eBook: How to Brand a Fantasy Map: A Writer's Guide to Otherworldly Cartography. You'll learn more than advanced techniques for making a fantasy map (including how to make forests), and y'all'll do it all in free, open source software that you'll never accept to pay for.

With our coastlines, lakes, mountains, and rivers done, we've nearly finished the bones geography of our map.  The most important thing that remains, still, is to depict the forests.  If your map is the classic Medieval fantasy setting, your world will likely exist covered in copse, so mapping out the forests is going to be of import.  This is where your peoples will likely become virtually of their meat, where they'll forage, and where they'll gear up upwards ambushes.  Luckily the forests are among the simplest parts of this whole process.

Vector Graphics

If this is the kickoff such tutorial you've read on my site, you should know that we'll be using vector software. It's not quite equally intuitive equally pixel editing, so it might be a bit of an aligning, simply once yous've got a handle on it it'll be a far better medium for this task.

The application I'll exist using is called Affinity Designer, although the free and open up source application Inkscape has many features that can make the task even easier.

Footstep 1 – Placement

First yous'll desire to determine roughly where y'all want your forests.  This is similar to what we did with the mountain ranges except that instead of single lines that co-operative out we'll be working with blob-like shapes.  Offset past creating a new layer called "Forest Guides," which we'll delete one time we're washed.  Now, in the newly-created layer, depict shapes where yous want the forests to be.  You'll likely desire there to be forests around most of your rivers.

Step two – Draw Trees

Now that we know where we want our forests, information technology's time to make some trees.  Create a new layer called "Forests."  If y'all desire, you lot can create a new document and use that to play around with different designs till you notice a type of tree you lot're happy with.  I'k going to go with something really simple for this tutorial: just a simple shape with a body.  You lot can make your trees more complex with bodily colours, but I'll make mine all blackness.

Step 3 – Make Forests

Place your tree wherever you want information technology.  At present you just duplicate the tree every bit many times every bit it takes till yous have a nice-looking forest.  It's really no different than what we did with the mountains several tutorials ago.  Don't worry if in that location are piddling gaps betwixt your copse; that actually makes it wait better.  One advantage of going with all-blackness trees is that you won't have to worry virtually what order the layers are in, merely a full-color map can look quite pleasing.  These are all decisions you'll have to brand yourself.

Every bit with the mountains, you shouldn't have all the trees exist separate if you lot're making a forest.  Clump them together.  It's a different story if you desire an expanse of trees to wait sparse, simply don't infinite them evenly; information technology won't look natural if you lot do.

Final Touches

Add together a few sparse copse at the edges of your forests to brand a smooth transition from forests to plains.  As always, y'all tin use different types of tree; having both deciduous and evergreen copse is a good thought.  You can even apply Layer Effects or Gradients for a 3D expect.  For this tutorial map, all the same, I'll simply utilise this one type in the involvement of keeping things uncomplicated.  Once your forests are done, delete the Forest Guides layer.

Washed!

Equally always, you should put a lot more effort into your forests than I did for this tutorial, but usually all that entails is making a nicer basic tree shape—preferably several.  As I said, forests are amid the easiest parts of making your vector map.  In many cases, elementary looks great.  Next time nosotros'll exist entering the realm of landmarks: cities, castles, and towns.

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For this tutorial I used version 6.1 of Affinity Designer.

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Source: https://hmturnbull.com/writing/fantasy/map-making/forests/

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