Free Map 031: A Micro Campsite Map

I'll be the first to admit that today's free map isn't a lot to look at. I've been playing around a bit with attempting to add in some colored pencil "effects". Some time ago I scanned in some large spots of color derived from scribbling with a set of colored pencils. Instead of using any given Photoshop effects I basically just insert my colored file behind the layer I'm working on and erase the top layer of color to expose the irregular colored pencil layer.

I like the effect, but I thought I might toy with it a bit to see what kind of tweaks I could achieve.

While I don't particularly care for the end results, especially factoring in the extra time (way too much extra time), it was worth the shot and I learned from the effort.

If only I could say that about all my endeavors.......

Here is the original file, a tiny campsite map that I was creating for #MicroMapMonday (next week obviously):

Nothing fancy, just a small clearing with a log, campfire pit, and some space for a tent or two. I think I'd normally not draw the outside edge of the tree ring, but I wanted more border to work with on the coloring experiment, which also involved some extra use of Adobe Illustrator.

This was my end result:

A bit "meh" for my tastes.....I quickly re-did the original map a second time, pretty much following my original methodology. I did do a quick pass-through Adobe Illustrator and copy back in some of the resulting AI file. I like this version much better, and it took maybe 1/4 of the time:

I think some of the color variation I was going for with my experiment already existed in my colored-pencil scans, which explains why I took too much time and didn't get the results I was looking for.

At least now I know better......

Since there are two maps on this post I went ahead and put both of them up for sharing. I linked the one I like best to the intro-graphic, but you can get it here and the first attempt here.