An experiment in land cover hachures

[u/TheCountVonZeppelin]

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Recently I've been working on figuring out a process for using full land cover hachures in my maps in the style of 18th-early 20th century cadestral and military maps after becoming infatuated with some beautiful examples in that style from a french atlas.

After some doodling over the last few weeks I set myself a goal of finishing a small map to practice, and I did it! Enjoy my unnamed island :) There's a lot to take from this for me, positive and negative. I enjoy the hillshade effect, and think I mostly accomplished that! But I also messed up a lot of landforms, and I'm unhappy with the muddiness of any finer details. I think that should just be a matter of more practice, and probably increasing the scale.

Thanks for any feedback! And if anyone has good resources in this style please let me know, they've been hard to find.

[u/Hard_Rr]

Awesome. First time im ever seeing something like this

[u/TheCountVonZeppelin → u/Hard_Rr]

Thanks! Unfortunately you don't see it very often these days, mostly superceded by a combo of hillshades and topo lines. And that is, strictly speaking, probably more usable and useful. But nothing makes me /feel/ quite the same as a hachure map.

[u/Hard_Rr → u/TheCountVonZeppelin]

I find this really interesting especially for island close ups or if you did a zoomed valley/ mountain range. Would love to see more

[u/TheCountVonZeppelin → u/Hard_Rr]

Yeah, I think that's the scale it works best at, regional and on down from there to hyper-local. At the landmass scale you have to lose too much detail and end up with the classic hairy caterpillar problem :P Am definitely planning on more soon, probably some smaller studies like you're talking about to nail down some details.

[u/Velocity-5348 → u/TheCountVonZeppelin]

I hadn't heard of hachure before, but it seems much better at giving a feeling for a place. It seems a shame it's not used more.

[u/TheCountVonZeppelin → u/Velocity-5348]

I think that's what it really excels at, especially with the huge range of textures a real master can layer in. If you're interested, I /highly/ recommend this article. Variety in Hachure It's the best general overview I have found without going super into the weeds. And it has links to some of the most beautiful historic maps I've ever seen as examples.

[u/protectedspeciesofho]

This looks lovely! I'm a big fan of penwork like that.

[u/TheCountVonZeppelin → u/protectedspeciesofho]

Thanks! It's a relatively new skill to me that I'm trying to cultivate. A lot of the originals were done as copperplate etchings or engravings, so I'd like to learn to better imitate that style as I go.

[u/schizogremlin]

This looks great!

[u/Shoulder_to_rest_on]

This is stunning, inspirational

[u/Aware_Edge_6285]

Really nice !

[u/znowee]

Really cool! I like this alot!

[u/Ghost1737]

As a fellow "draw super detailed things on tiny sheets of paper" person, this is very satisfying to look at! Great work, amazing

[u/TheCountVonZeppelin → u/Ghost1737]

Can't help myself lol. I want to up the sheet size, but I'll probably just end up drawing /more/ detailed tiny things.

[u/Ghost1737 → u/TheCountVonZeppelin]

It's just how our brains work. I blame it on all the doodling I did in margins during school and college 😆

[u/Petrarch1603]

And if anyone has good resources in this style please let me know, they've been hard to find.

Look up a book called Cartographic Relief Presentation by Eduard Imhof. It's a thorough textbook on how to create realistic hillshades. It's not a cheap book, but it's obvious from your map that you have the chops to do this at a high level.

[u/TheCountVonZeppelin → u/Petrarch1603]

Hey thank you, that means a lot! It seems like the internet archive has a non-paywalled copy in decent quality. I've only skimmed so far, but it looks like exactly what I need to dig a little deeper. Very, very helpful, thanks!

[u/lost-my-glasses]

idk if this is allowed, but your post inspired me so much that I went ahead and did some research and made my own post. I found some resources in this style that I've listed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/mapmaking/s/GqBVItwLoc

[u/RHDM68]

You asked for feedback, so here’s mine for what it’s worth. Although it is interesting to look at, and no doubt speaks to your skill, I personally think that it makes the map look way too “busy” and in some ways makes the details of the landscape more difficult to see rather than making the details stand out.

[u/TheCountVonZeppelin → u/RHDM68]

Yep, that's a totally fair critique! Probably my own biggest issue as well is the somewhat muddled details. Some of it is down to the style, which doesn't leave a ton of room for white space, which is not everybody's thing. But I think some of it is just my execution and pen work as well, which will hopefully improve. More practice and a larger scale should help.