Excavating.. (Patreon)

Doesn't look like much yet, but this is how my last few map-illustrations have started out looking. Sketchup is a really great tool for doing 3D maquettes quickly, but I've started going back to traditional techniques - rulers and a blue pencil.

I'm totally hooked on three-point perspective, rather than isometric. There's something about the gradually spreading vertical lines that make me really feel like I'm peering down at the world from nearby/above, rather than viewing a schematic.

It might be hard to tell (I drew this in blue pencil, and had to crank the heck out of the levels to make anything visible) but this is a waterfall/gorge in a jungle. The waterfall (which comes down the left side of the image) curls to the right and flows along the bottom of the image off to the distance in the right, along the floor of the gorge. Cut into the soft, volcanic pumice is an excavation that is gradually revealing an ancient place of power.