Desert Island, Adept

This week's map is the Desert Island (30x30), a remote island map where you'll probably find an old dusty skeleton clutching a treasure chest. If you're me, you'll assume that touching that dusty skeleton's treasure will immediately cause a dozen pirate skeletons to burst up from the sand and crawl out of the water to defend their booty, so instead surprise your party by revealing that the palm trees are tropical ents who use the treasure to bait people to their island and use their bodies as fertilizer. And yes, of course the palm tree ents use coconuts as projectiles and it makes a funny sound when someone gets bonked in the head by one, that should be obvious.

 1. The plan here was to make these islands small, and that's that. Many of my island maps are big enough and with enough plants and things that you can't help but assume you could camp there for a while and be ok if stranded. This one I wanted to be so small and sparse that survival wouldn't feel like an option.

Also, I wanted to place them close enough together that you could assume that you can wade over from one to the other. Sure, you'd be slowed by the water, but the possibility there there and that'll give you a little something extra to work with in combat. Not a lot to work with, but it's something!

 2. Yup, not a lot. I decided this time to really focus on the water details since there wasn't a lot more to draw. I usually don't spend any time at all on water in my maps, adding some detail lines here and there as an afterthought, so I suppose it's been a long time coming. I had the water lines intersect with the shoreline here and there in an attempt to imply some movement to the water but still I avoided drawing in actual waves since it feels strange to sketch in something that's constantly in motion. Instead I stuck to just detailing ripples in the water, just to get the idea across.

Additionally I decided to color the water lines for the first time ever. How has it taken me so long to do this? It's really kinda crazy that it only just occurred to me, it's so obvious, especially since I've been coloring the shoreline for years already. This small change has drastically improved the look of the water, as you'll see in the image below.  3. Wow, that water looks so much better without those big black lines wiggling through it. Honestly, how did it take me so long to give the water lines color? I'm tempted to make another island map just so I can enjoy the look of it even more.

Everything else here is fairly stock otherwise, with just minor tweaks to the palette I used in last week's map. As I suspected, this tropical palette comes off way better when there's lots of water in the image to offset all the greens and yellows. I even toned down the greens a little to let the blues shine better, which I think was the right choice. Honestly, I think I will make another island map just so I can live in this space a little longer, that sounds nice.