Town Courtyard at Dusk, Adept & Expert (Patreon)

Hey there everyone, your alternate version this time is a pretty simple change to a different time of day. I think it's nice to have maps set at different times of the day, it's an easy way to keep immersion. With this extra dusk version, you'll be prepared for a fight no matter how much time your party spends comparing potion prices or hiding to let the heat die down. 

Let's talk about how this one turned out

1. When I draw a new terrain for the first time I like to draw it simple and straightforward. As this is my first urban map, I didn't want to rock the boat, so instead, I made a nice basic street to fit many scenarios. Mission accomplished, but next time I want to get a bit kookier with it. 

The campaign that I run is typically set in a single city, so I've done quick dry-erase sketches of many many streets. I never find them very exciting though. That will probably be my goal for future urban maps: layouts that can be used in most campaigns (no matter the city), but interesting enough to entertain me while I'm drawing it.

2. A lot happened between steps 1 and 2, but honestly less than it seems. I've been getting over a cold, which typically means I'm cutting corners wherever I can. Duplicating, tiling, and snatching assets from past maps all made this one a lot easier to put together. I don't like taking so many shortcuts because I think it shows, but the way this week was going it was this or nothing. 

Not shown are the other attempted roof tiles I've drawn and scrapped. All of them were acceptable alternatives but they grabbed the eye way too much. Overcomplication is a sin I do my best to dodge, but I may have gone too far to avoid it this time. Some different shapes on the roofs would have helped this map a lot, but I ran too short on time to find a better solution. Maybe I'll come back to this someday for my own sake, I'm sure I'll come up with ways to improve it with time. 

3. As always, color and shadow always make the map. Sometimes I finish the outlines absolutely certain the map will be trash, but once it's colored and shaded I feel much better about it. 

An issue I hadn't considered though was how I would color the grass. Using my typical palette, the grass looked ridiculous compared to all the grays and browns. I experimented with fading the grass from the outside-in a yellowish gray to a vivid green; I was fine with it for a while, but something about it made it look like all the grass was floating a couple of feet above the cobblestone. I guess I couldn't consider dulling the grass down, but in the end, it was for the best. Still looking forward to drawing a colorful map again, maybe next week.