Seaside Cove, Adept

Hello again, folks! This one is the Seaside Cove (35x35), a teensy tiny cove with lots of palm trees and sand, simple enough that it can be slotted into any somewhat tropical adventures with ease. And, since it's tropical, your alternate version is rainy, because that's just how it is in tropical places. Enjoy!

 1. I've been messaged with suggestions for tropical maps recently by a handful of patrons, so I figured I might as well take a lil break from autumnal maps and jumpscare you with something different.

I started by glancing through my previous tropical maps and looking at what types of maps I haven't yet made. I've got a few beaches but mostly lots of islands, so I decided to look into the types of landscapes you might find on the coast that would make for interesting combats. Images from geography textbooks are great for this kind of research, by the way, as are Magic the Gathering lands!

So, I decided to make a cove, which is simple enough, with a nice rocky gap at the entrance (smaller than usual, so maybe this is actually a tidepool rather than a cove?) and a lovely ring of rock walls surrounding it. I knew so many rock walls were going to be a huge pain in my butt to draw, but it's what the map needs so I had to be strong. Everything else, like rocks and trees, aren't terribly vital to the landscape here so I figured I'd improvise with those later when it came down to it.. after all the rock wall drawing that is.

 2. Oh my god, drawing all these rock walls was the worst. So exhaustingly monotonous, but requiring my full attention so that the topology makes sense. I started listening to the Stormlight Archive audio books recently though so that helped pass the time.

I honestly don't remember drawing anything else in this map other than the rock walls, I must have drawn the rest in a fugue state after I wrapped up those stinkin' walls.

 3. Hey, it must have been a long time since I've drawn a tropical map because I felt like I had no idea what I was doing! The colors didn't make sense to me, I started from scratch with the lighting and effects, and then I scrapped everything and started over, but piecemeal like the ship of Theseus, over the course of the last 3 days I've tweaked every color in the map bit by bit. I've been staring at this image for way too long, I have no idea what I'm even looking at anymore, it's like when you say a word so many times that it loses all meaning. Do the shadows make any sense? Can you tell which areas are higher than others? Is the water a realistic shade of blue? Are the trees too dark? I have no clue, so I'm going to step away now and hope I don't get a bunch of DMs about this.