Stone Circle, Adept (Patreon)

Hello folks, I'm back this week with the Stone Circle (30x40), a little peninsula with some Stonehenge-type ruins at the peak, a location which will be perfect for druidic rituals, portals to the Feywild, or an absolute rager of a party with some satyrs or other forest-dwelling critters. 

Your alternate version of this map is Fey, one of my all time favorite Fey versions! For this one I added some new magical effects on top of the usual little yellow sparkles, some interesting cyan fog which I feel looks very mystical. I imagine that this stone circle might draw some arcane power to it from its surroundings, or perhaps it is built in such a way that generates magic, and I wanted to depict that a little more strongly than I previously might have. I think it's fun!

1. In my original sketch, I had some pretty different ideas of what this map was going to be. Firstly, I had planned for the stone circle to be located at a fork in a river, depicted by two additional landmasses near the top of the screen. I ended up cutting this concept for a few reasons. Firstly, I don't much like adding tiny strips of land to the edges of maps, since players might want to utilize that space in combat and find that there's nothing beyond it, which puts DMs in a rough spot since they will need to improvise additional terrain outside the map. Secondly, I liked the idea of this location jutting out dramatically into a lake, perhaps drawing enemies who might have noticed some sort of flashy magical ritual taking place here. And thirdly, I'm not going to sugarcoat it, it's easier to draw water than land; I know pretty quickly when I'm making a map that will take more time to assemble than I have available, and this one's original concept would have pushed me past my deadline. 

2. Outlines! Ok, it's starting to show that I made this map over 6 months ago, I remember almost nothing about drawing this one. I do recall agonizing over the stone circle, which I wanted to be slightly ruined, but obviously not so ruined that it lost its circular nature. Also, I realized part way through that I had no idea what Stonehenge (the inspiration for this map) was supposed to look like originally, and if I should maybe try to imitate it more exactly. However, I learned that Stonehenge is actually absolutely enormous and would make for a very strange map if depicted realistically with a grid. I'll leave that to another mapmaker, someone who messes with 3D views so they can depict the stones themselves in a way that makes any sense to the viewer. 

3. The first colored image above was my initial pass at this map back in July 2021, and the second is my next attempt I made this week. I had a few issues with the original that I realized I would have to address before posting this one, specifically the transitions between grass, ground, and water, which all felt a little too abrupt. The biggest change made here was the water, which I filled out with more of a gradient near the shoreline, as well as a little more darkness further away. 

After that, I went about softening some of the harder edges in the shadows so they didn't look so plastered on, and I took a moment to paint some extra details onto the stones themselves, which felt a little too flat. As they now stand, they feel a little dirtier and have somewhat more depth than the original, which is a massive improvement.