# Mapping Resources > Mapping Elements >  Hand-drawn map elements

## Ramah

I had a request for some of the elements I used in my maps so I thought I would post them here for anyone who so desires.
I will also add more brushes as and when I have a need for them. But for now, here are the brushes I used on Aronbor here and a bunch of others I have created since.

As well as the tree pack I've also now split the markers into two different brush packs as I want to keep them as uncluttered as possible. So the shaded icons are in one pack and if you want to shade yourself there's an outlined brush pack instead.

Here's an image that shows all the brushes that are currently in the three packs...



Note that all of the above brushes are at their actual size except the castles and trees which have been shrunk quite a lot to keep the image size down.

Here's a layer I made to aid me doing quick forests. I've had to crop it down to fit the filesize requirements of this forum, which is a shame although it's still a big file. (The original is the same size as my current maps, so 3704 * 4400). It's not perfect, there's some banding on it when zoomed out (as can be seen on the thumbnail) but it's nothing too bad. To use it, just add a layer mask to hide it, then paint where your forest need to be and then go around the edges and paint out any unwanted trees.



I also have a layer with the shadows I use between the trees but this is easy enough to do from scratch.
I got sidetracked from re-doing my smaller multi-tree forest brushes but I will sort them out one day and will post them up once I'm happy with them.

For the mountains and hills, check out Vhailor27's brushes that were reverse-engineered from the mountains on my Aronbor map here.

Any brushes posted here are free to use for whatever purpose you so desire. A little mention for credit would be nice though.  :Smile:

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## Steel General

Nice, thanks for posting!

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## Ascension

You might be giving away the farm here but I'll take em  :Smile:   Thanks a lot, bro, for upping these.

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## Ramah

> You might be giving away the farm here but I'll take em   Thanks a lot, bro, for upping these.


Hehe. I've seen your sketching, dude. They're nothing you can't do yourself ten times better.  :Smile:

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## Locution

Ramah, thanks a ton for these. It is much appreciated!

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## Ramah

I've edited the first post to include a new image of a full layer of forest to aid in placing quick deciduous forests.

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## Coyotemax

That is absolutely brilliant!!!
I'm glad i though of that!!   :Smile: 

Seriously though, I'm suprised this method hasn't come up before, it really is one of the best ideas i've seen for hand drawn forests.
**rep** (if it will let me)

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## Ramah

I doubt the method is all that new, it's just that not many people are stupid enough to make an image of that size out of little trees.  :Smile:  It's only really worth the time and effort of doing such a thing if you have some large forests you need to put it or if you have lots and lots of forests to do (such as I will have over the series of Vaniya maps I no doubt will do). But once it's done it's done, so hopefully I can now place all my large and medium sized forests really quickly. It will probably still be quicker to do small forests with individual brushes.

Anyway, it wasn't a lot of fun to do I can tell you. Hehe.

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## Ramah

Some new brushes to add that I've made today. I fixed the cottage to make it more iso and then added a bunch of alternative cottages. I fixed the castle to be more iso. I fixed the church a tiny bit to more be more iso. I also added a few tents into the mix.



I've uploaded these new brushes into the original post. Sorry that they are in no particular order in the file or mostly unnamed.

Next thing for me to tackle is to fix the perspective of the little city icon and add a bunch of alternative ones. I'll get them posted once I've done them.

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## Gandwarf

Great, thanks for posting. Have some rep!

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## Morshwan

Oh, nice. It will save me a couple of hours (or couple of days)! I had no idea to draw trees.

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## Ramah

Ok, a few more castles to add to the mix. I'm not going to re-upload the brushes set until I get a few more in there but for now, if anyone is absolutely desperate for an iso castle you can get one from this image...



I have several more different type of castle I'm going to add in but I've run out of time tonight.

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## Ascension

Those keeps got me to thinking...we need to get a list together of different castle styles.  We're all familiar with the peaked roof kind and the Gothic battlement style but what are some others?  What are the proper names?  Ive got a bunch of castle books and I'll see what I can find out and maybe post some pics.  

I like these a lot and can't wait for the next zip.  Ok, well, I _can_, but you know what I mean  :Smile:

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## Ramah

Ah, crud.

Just when I had completely settled on a style I go and try colouring an icon, a la Ascension's Elosha.



I had planned on making another pass at Aronbor once I'd finished my set of icons, (Perdon is on hold while I make these as it will save me having to go back and change them but also I'm just having a lot more fun drawing these at the moment than I am doing a map  :Smile:  ) but I had no intention of adding colour.

But I just love how this turned out with a very simple shading. I just KNOW I'm going to have to colourize a whole map. :S

Ah well... I've done another two castle brushes tonight but I'll post an image later as I've also started another castle which is a bit more detailed and I want to get it done first.

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## Ascension

It does look pretty cool.  Maybe you could turn the opacity down to just give a hint of color and thus stay closer to the original vision.  But that's up to you, I like it either way  :Smile:

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## Gandwarf

Oh man... color does look cool Ramah  :Shocked: 
I feel your pain.

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## ravells

Those castles are just utterly lovely. 

Ramah, am I being thick? i think the purple turrets work really well with the green. But then my wife says I have no sense of colour coordination at all (clothes)...she laughs at how I can agonise about the colours I use in maps and then go out the next morning with a pink shirt and blue tie.

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## Ramah

> Those castles are just utterly lovely. 
> 
> Ramah, am I being thick? i think the purple turrets work really well with the green. But then my wife says I have no sense of colour coordination at all (clothes)...she laughs at how I can agonise about the colours I use in maps and then go out the next morning with a pink shirt and blue tie.


Hehe. Well, I don't think you are being thick, I think it is the vibrant colour against that green that really makes it stand out. It really reminds me of the old maps in the Lone Wolf books which I used to love.
That being said... you walk outside in some green trousers and a purple shirt then you are just begging for funny looks.  :Smile:

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## ravells

Do you know, I don't even notice. But then apart from work clothes (Felicity's domain) I just wear brown, green and gray.

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## Juggernaut1981

Oh Great Wiki, I beseech thee to impart upon us all thy great wisdom and other irrelevant useless crap that people bother to give to thee in the first place...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle

But yeah, I'm sure the other great oracle Google can help us all.

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## Ascension

I used to think green and purple didn't go together either until someone posted a map here a while back with those colors and I realized that it's the shade that's important.  So if you want purple roofs with green grass then I say go for it, I think it looks good.  But I wear t-shirts and shorts 365, unless I go sledding with my nieces then I put on some jeans (they think I'm part dragon cuz I never get cold) or if I go golfing then I wear plaid shorts with Hawaiian shirts.  So I may not be the best judge of style  :Wink:  but at least I don't wear black socks with flip-flops...I'm not cool enough, yet, for that.  I wonder if I can work in some paisley into a map....

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## Ramah

I bet you could get quite a cool landmass from the paisley pattern.  :Very Happy:

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## Ramah

Ok, here's another 3 castles to add to the mix. I'm gonna do one more in this first pass of brushes then move onto other things I need like the city icon.
I'll re-upload the zip file in the original post once I've done the last castle.



Edit: Oh, I should probably add for anyone who might look at them and wonder if these castles are maybe too big to shrink to a usable size that I personally think they still look like obvious castles even when shrunk down to 10% of their original size.

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## Gandwarf

Very cool castles Ramah... quickly, give the man some rep!
(I can't rep at the moment  :Frown:  )

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## Juggernaut1981

Ramah,
Apparently I attack you with my Rep-Noodle too often... but consider yourself Rep-whacked in spirit... if not in observance yet.

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## Locution

This is fantastic work Ramah! If I could rep you I would...

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## altasilvapuer

It's okay everyone, *Altasilvapuer* is here!  Apparently I haven't repped Ramah in a while, so I managed to crack the rep whip a little for all of us.

Now quick, all you stalkers, crack your own rep whips.  Ramah deserves more!

-asp   :Wink:

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## Midgardsormr

Those castles look terrific, Ramah. Great job!




> I used to think green and purple didn't go together either


I think it's fine:

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## rdanhenry

I gave my wee rep-bump. Those castles are awesome. I'm sure they'd work at 10%, but you'd lose some nice detail.

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## Morshwan

THIS will help me a lot! Thanks.
Waiting this week-end to try that.

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## Ramah

Thanks a lot guys.

I'm really enjoying making them at the moment, and as they will be useful for my own maps it's kind of a win-win situation for me doing them in one lump like this rather than creating them one at a time as and when I need it. It also means I'm drawing more than I strictly have to so when it comes to placing them I'll have a lot more variation than I would have had.
And if it helps a few fellow mappers then so much the better.

I'm toying with the idea of redoing many of them once I've completed enough to call it a set in a much more rough and ready style to form a second set that doesn't quite follow the iso form as slavishly as these are.

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## Ramah

Ok, these are the last 3 castles I'm doing for now.



I've re-uploaded the Markers.zip file in the original post with all the new castle brushes and I've included all the castles in outline/wireframe brushes too, in case anyone wants to shade their own brushes.

Next up I'm moving onto the city icons and a few other miscellaneous small icons that I want to do.

Enjoy.

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## mearrin69

Repped. Very nice stuff. Makes me want to make a map just to try them out on it. Thanks for sharing.
M

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## RobA

I just rep-slapped you for all those others... Think you got 15 or so from me?

-Rob A>

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## Ramah

Thanks guys.

JFrazierJr made a relevant comment about the houses being too dark for him so I whipped up an image that you can take outline brushes from if you so desire and shade yourself. There's a few more houses on here than in the brush pack. I need to add some chimneys and make a few more of the bottom row but I ran out of time for now.



Here's another image with some of those brushes used to make some rougher style hand-drawn houses.



And lastly, if you're into puzzles while you map, then here's an image to get you going.



Enjoy.

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## jfrazierjr

Thanks.. how about a few simple arched gate towers.  So.. two towers connected by an arched walkway.  Thinking about something for entrance to my Dwarven kingdom and having trouble making it myself.

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## Ramah

Sure, I'll have a crack at it today at some time.

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## Ramah

Ok. here's some very simple gateways.



If you'd like some refinement or something completely different then just let me know. I'm not sure if you want squat, tall, wide, curved, angular etc. etc.

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## jfrazierjr

> Ok. here's some very simple gateways.
> 
> 
> 
> If you'd like some refinement or something completely different then just let me know. I'm not sure if you want squat, tall, wide, curved, angular etc. etc.


Yep, that top right one is EXACTLY what I was trying to do last night.  I got it ok, but could not get the "inner"(far side) arch to come out correctly...

Another to try would be the circular tower approach might be nice too..

THANKS!!!!

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## Gandwarf

Those big castles in the top post rock... really nice.

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## Ramah

Thanks Gandwarf.

Here's a gate with round towers for you then JFrazierjr.

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## Vorhees

Thanks heaps for these , being a Novice at this things like this help heaps and inspire. Im throwing some rep your way too.  :Smile:

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## Ramah

First city icon in the new style. Outline and quickly shaded version. I plan on doing at least a half dozen different ones so the next post will be when I've finished them all.

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## Ascension

Good stuff.  Keep em comin.   :Smile:

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## Locution

This stuff is pure gold!

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## jfrazierjr

> First city icon in the new style. Outline and quickly shaded version. I plan on doing at least a half dozen different ones so the next post will be when I've finished them all.


I am waiting with baited breath for more since I have need of a few more city/town symbols in this style for my Baldimar map.

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## Ramah

> I am waiting with baited breath for more since I have need of a few more city/town symbols in this style for my Baldimar map.


Hehe. Ok, I'll try and get some done for tonight. I did one with a wall around it and I wasn't happy with it so I ended up spending hours fiddling with the damn thing, trying to get it better. In the end I just got sick of doing that particular icon, went looking for something else to do and got sucked in to doing Tear's tutorial.  :Smile: 

Anyway, it won't take me long at all to whip us some more icons similar to that other city one.

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## jfrazierjr

Thanks Ramah... I am in no specific hurry or anything, just kind of itching to finished this damn thing up since I already went over the one year mark...lol

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## rdanhenry

If you're itching to make more, I'd love to see some ruins matching the rest of these.

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## Ramah

Ok, sorry that there isn't much to show here but as soon as I settled down to get some done I was constantly interrupted. Ah well, I'll do some rough shading on these and rattle some more off tomorrow afternoon when I should get plenty of time.



I also managed to get these done, which have been on my to do list for a while now.



I'll do a few more thinner ones and also some square towers to finish off the tower collection for now.

Oh, and I'll see about getting some ruins done Rdanhenry.

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## Ramah

Oh, and as I haven't posted these already I may as well do so now before I trot off to bed.

The first is the outline of the churches I did. I've cleaned this up a lot and fixed some issues with it being a little warped.



The next one is a few more castle variations. I thought I had done another with the fairytale castle plonked directly in the square-towered wall but I guess not. That's another on my to-do list.



Once I've done some more city icons and shaded them then I'll re-upload a brush pack. Maybe it would be better to upload two so the outline brushes can be kept separate. I do intend to shade all the outlines by the way.

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## Gandwarf

This stuff really is pure gold. Thanks!

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## DevinNight

great job. having a whole library of these brushes and objects is great. Sharing them with everyone is also great.

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## Ascension

That gets me to thinking, maybe you might want to do a tut for helping people build up their own brush/stamp libraries...like what sort of things they're going to need, keeping perspectives aligned, stuff like that.  It's one thing for us all to take your stuff and use it but then all of our maps look the same so if we could do our own then we each get to add our own flavor.  Sure, not everyone is an artist but for those of us who are I think that could be quite handy.

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## Ramah

You're probably right, Ascension but I'm sure someone else could write such a tutorial better than me. I've just been thinking about it and I'm just not sure how much I could write about it. I might give it a crack later and see if I can write enough content to make it worthwhile.

Right, here are the latest city images. I've only added one more new outline at the moment but the night is still young. What I have done though is shaded it and also shaded the other two that I posted last night.



Gonna do a couple more and then leave cities for a while.

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## Ascension

I think you'd be perfect.  You've done a bunch and therefore have a working knowledge that the rest of us don't have...I've only done a handful and you could give pointers on shading that I couldn't.  Anyways, up to you my friend.

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## Redrobes

Not that I do the perspective sort of mapping but I am going to say it too...

This stuff is pure gold !

Watch the cogs of the rep counter spin round....
 :Very Happy:

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## Gandwarf

Those last few symbols... wow, amazing... I feel a map itch. M-must resist.

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## katoblepa

Thank you Ramah! Those are priceless  :Very Happy: 

rep added

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## rdanhenry

Oh, I don't think it is a question of a tutorial. I know what I need to make icons like that. I need to practice lots of drawing until I get much, much better at it. Mine look like this:

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## Locution

I am hoping beyond hope that santa will bring me a tablet for Christmas so I can try my hand at my own. I am useless with the mouse :S

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## Ramah

Ok, here are the last of the city icons I'm gonna do for now. They don't take long to do so I will knock up some more another day but I seem to get bogged down in doing the little bits that go into them.
So today I shaded all the fixed churches. Did another quick tower. Added some more house outlines. And did two more cities.

None of the new houses have chimneys yet and the new L-shaped ones are all over the place with windows and doors - a side-effect of me rotating and merging - but I ran out of steam to do them tonight. I'll clean them up another day.

Anyway, here's the stuff.

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## Diamond

These are simply great brushes.  Thanks for sharing 'em.

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## jfrazierjr

Thanks for all the time spent...  I am eagerly awaiting the brush pack upload...

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## Ramah

I'll do it this evening when I'm able to get more than a few minutes on here.

Btw, is there a way to reorder brushes in a pack? Renaming them doesn't seem to move them to alphabetically sorted, they just remain in the order in which they were created. At the moment they are all over the place.
Do I need to delete them all and repopulate my list from scratch?

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## Ramah

Ok, I've updated the original post with the new brush packs (markers are now separated into two different packs: shaded and outlined).

The pack names have changed as a result of this so if you downloaded the previous marker pack then it will still be there in your brush directory. Feel free to delete this.

I've also updated the image in the original post so you can see exactly what is in the current packs.

Hopefully someone will find these things beneficial.

Enjoy.

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## jfrazierjr

> Hopefully someone will find these things beneficial.
> 
> Enjoy.


I KNOW I WILL!!!  THANKS!!  I have to spread more rep, but will get back to you as soon as I can.   I would love if you could continue doing more as your time permits as you have very good skills.  Things I would not mind seeing: 


More large settlements with multiple houses, perhaps including a single central building or two(or keep)A few ruined castles, towers, etc would be great...Though I doubt I would use it in the near future, perhaps a brush for an ISO farmland.  I think this is one I can do myself and may give it a shot in the next few days..  Just imagine a series of crosshatches (perhaps 4-5 lines per inch, then rotate 90 degrees and then rotate the whole thing to fit ISO perspective...)more of everything already included....

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## Locution

Ramah you rock! I have an idea of a nifty way to use these. Another couple things that wouldnt hurt would be ports and maybe a wall. Thanks for all the hard work you are putting into these. I think I speak for everyone when I say it is much appreciated!

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## Gandwarf

Each time I visit this thread I feel like repping you... need to spread around some rep first  :Smile:

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## jfrazierjr

Just wanna show that with a bit of judicious selection and cropping (I actually did not use masks here, though thats probably what I *should* have done), I combined 4 of the brush elements into a singe "town".  The first one is straight up and the second one is the with the texture (set to overlay mode) above everything... this gives the whole thing a more cartoony effect.

If I am remembering properly, this is:

Markers_Shaded.abr-001
Markers_Shaded.abr-006
Markers_Shaded.abr-010
Markers_Shaded.abr-012
Markers_Shaded.abr-013

I added a color layer beneath with some rather hideous color combos(yes, I like bold).  I also blurred the "bottoms" of the lines quite a bit to get them to blend into the background color as well as put a bit of a blur over the rest of the line work.  Also, on a new layer in a few places I added a bit more texture to some of the roofs that seemed to flat to make it appear a bit more like planks/shingles.

Again, thanks a TON to Ramah for all the time spent on these!!!!

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## Ascension

That's a great idea Joe.  I might have to try that.

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## Ramah

That's pretty cool. Glad you're having fun using them.  :Smile:

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## jfrazierjr

> That's pretty cool. Glad you're having fun using them.


I R!!!! of course... being greedy, I am eagerly awaiting more....heh....

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## Coyotemax

Ramah: i notice on last page that you were asking if there's a way to re-order brushes, and there was no response as yet..  Yes there is.  When in the preset manager, you can just click and hold, then drag it over to where you would like it to show up.  I just figured that out myself recently, I got tired of putting so much effort into remembering what order I wanted to create brushes in, and thought "there's gotta be a better way" heh.

(ok that came out slightly wrong).

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## Ramah

Ah, cool. Thanks for that CM.

I'd tried dragging and dropping them in the normal Brush Prest panel of the Brush window but it was no go there. I'd never actually opened up that Preset Manager before. Works a treat. Thanks.  :Smile:

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## jfrazierjr

Here is yet another one combining 4 or 5 of Ramah's shaded icons into a single city icon with coloring.  There are a few places where the coloring is not all the way to the edges, but you have to zoom in an look hard to see them.   Also, I added all the masks first and then put a layer under to color.  What I should have done is to color each icon as I placed them, and then follow up with masking it out as a new icon was laid over top.   It was much more painful to try to stay within the lines so to speak the way I did it lol...  If anyone wants the GIMP brush, let me know...

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## Saule

Truly amazing, thanks for making these available.  :Smile: 

I've started to work on a map using these icons, only the trees, mountains and hills are in yet, but I thought you might want to see the results so far.
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=8800

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## rafaelrzacharias

Wow, now that's a smart idea!
I was just passing by and that stuff caught my eyes... a really good job and nicely done. Ramah!
Congrats! ^^

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## Gidde

These are amazing, and exactly what I was looking for ... repped and rated. Thanks for sharing them!

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## Knucklez91

I'm totally new here and working on my first map.  These look like they're going to make it possible; thank you so much!

Edit: I should say I'm a long-time lurker, newb in the participation department.

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## Seraphine_Harmonium

Came across a link to these, and they are awesome!  I can't open .abr files, however.  Is there a way I can get them in a different file format?

Oh, and btw, repped!

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## jtougas

GIMP will read the .abr file as a regular GIMP brush. Place the .abr file in your GIMP share folder in the subfolder "Brushes" and you'll be able to use these.  :Smile:

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## Seraphine_Harmonium

> GIMP will read the .abr file as a regular GIMP brush. Place the .abr file in your GIMP share folder in the subfolder "Brushes" and you'll be able to use these.


Except that it doesn't.  I put it in the "Brushes" subfolder, but it doesn't appear, and why I try to manually open the file I get this notification:

Opening 'C:\Program Files (x86)\GIMP-2.0\share\gimp\2.0\brushes\Markers_Shaded.abr' failed: Unknown file type

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## jtougas

Are you restarting GIMP after putting the brushes in the folder?

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## Seraphine_Harmonium

> Are you restarting GIMP after putting the brushes in the folder?


 . . .

 . . . *Restarts GIMP* . . . 

 . . . 

Oh Hey!  Look at that!  It worked!  Thank you JTougas.  Boy do I feel silly.

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## RobA

> . . .
> 
>  . . . *Restarts GIMP* . . . 
> 
>  . . . 
> 
> Oh Hey!  Look at that!  It worked!  Thank you JTougas.  Boy do I feel silly.


You could have probably just refreshed the brush list rather than restarting:


-Rob A>

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## jtougas

> You could have probably just refreshed the brush list rather than restarting:
> 
> 
> -Rob A>


I for some reason do not have that refresh button on my brush dialog so I also forget to tell people to use it. Glad I could help SH. Don't feel silly we've all been there.  :Smile:

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## eViLe_eAgLe

You have no idea how much this helps me Ramah.. More for inspiration then actually using them though  :Smile:  And slight copying so I can get the Iso down right.

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## Lachasso

Beautiful stuff, thanks for posting

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## CefasHeli

Du have some mountains brushes ?

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## Saule

> Du have some mountains brushes ?


Vhalinor put some together a while ago. This is the thread:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...-s-Aronbor-map

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## paulbhartzog

Really gracious of you, Ramah, to share so many of your tools and techniques.

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## maza

I know I'm late, but this is great. Thanks.

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## waddleman

This deserves a bump out of sheer awesomeness. I've been using these symbols in my newest map and they are simply amazing. Thank you for making these fantastic brushes.

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## KiwiRose

I love these brushes, they're superb!

 Not if only I could find some modern building brushes in a comparable style. ^_^;

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## TurningGears

I was wondering how I could install these, I use Gimp when I have to but usually I use Pdn, If that information helps.

Never mind, I figured it out, I'll be repping this as soon as I can actually give real rep.

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## Ilanthar

Thanks a lot for those excellent buildings !

I used it with delight for my dreamrift map (link below).
http://www.cartographersguild.com/at...5&d=1345207793

So thanks again, it's quite difficult to draw small good-looking buildings like that!

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## MarkusTay

I just want to say thanks for these. 

I've been using your mountain brushes that Vhalinor made, and with these I'll be all set. They really have that 'old school' feel me and my group are looking for.

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## Kyros

I love these brushes you have created. They really add to the look and feel of a map. Thank you for sharing them with the rest of us.

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## Vaevictis

Realy great works ! I'll try them, sure !!

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## kingdinosaurgames

These are absolutely amazing

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