Do you want to improve your city maps to make sure they fit your adventures or stories perfectly? In this 2h12m class we are going to explore how to use the basic tools of Adobe Photoshop to draw a city map from scratch!

I'll assume that you know your way around the basics of Adobe Photoshop and you can follow along with most of the tools without in depth explanations of how they work. Are you not comfortable enough with Adobe Photoshop yet? There's a lot of classes on Skillshare that'll help you familiarize yourself with the app!

What Will You Learn?

Layout: We'll start by talking about the layout of the city. Think about how people move from place to place and how that affect the streets.
Terrain: Unless you're going to focus on a specific district, you will probably want to show some of the surroundings of the city. Is it build on top of a hill or next to a river. Maybe your city is built on an island. In this lesson we're going to focus on drawing the terrain on which your city is built.
Drawing the City: In the next lesson we're going to explore how to draw the different elements of the city, including walls, castles, buildings, important locations, docks and surroundings.
Coloring: When all the elements are drawn it's time to add some colour. We'll start by drawing the flat colors for the the terrain and buildings, and then move on to simple techniques to add detailed shading and lighting.
Adding Labels: Finally it's time to label the map. I'll go over the process of marking each important location and creating a title and key for the map.
Finishing Touches: when the map itself is done it's time to add some finishing touches such as making the line art and text blend in with the map, making all the elements of the map pop and adding a simple decoratie border to the map.

Whether you are an illustrator or simply want to create a city for your own campaigns or stories, this class will get you ready to pick up your idea and turn it into something great!

Oliver Cannon

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