Download a free set of custom brushes for quickly creating landmasses, islands or internal borders.
I talked in a previous post about some of the go-to approaches I take when initially creating a new island or landmass shape. Another method I sometimes use is simply, chaotically scribing with one of my custom brushes that you can download by clicking here. They are available for Photoshop, Affinity Photo and Procreate.The Brushes
There are 4 brushes included, (you don't always need 6,740 brushes to complete a task right?!) made up of these two tip shapes:- Border Brush Predominantly used for creating quick landmasses; and
- Border Stamp Brush I find more useful for creating internal borders; such as countries within a continent, or districts/provinces within a country.
How they work
Just so you can see the brushes in the context of how I use them, there's a quick little demo below where I'm just doodling with the Border Brush, repeatedly creating and destroying things (alternating between the brush and eraser tool (both set to the same border brush), or simply switching between black paint and white paint). You'll see that some interesting shapes can be created pretty quick. Obviously you can stop when you have created something you like, adjust and fine tune it before tracing around it to create the type of outline you want. Or whatever you're preferred method is.
The example below shows how I tend to use the Border Stamp Brush (I'm working with the dark arts here and using Photoshop, but the process is the same regardless of your choice of software). The outlines are part of my homebrew world of Talth (you'll be hearing more about that soon) and I have placed them on a separate layer. Below that I have a blank layer that contains a layer mask which allows me to paint just over the actual areas of land. Any bodies of water will not be effected. This would essentially be a clipping mask, or locked transparency in procreate. Its on this layer that I can quickly just start creating shapes to form guides for countries, provinces or districts.
Hopefully you find these useful. Until next time, keep thine ink flowing!