Evolution of The Sinking Village Map and Some of My Mapping Techniques

I didn't take a picture of the outline of the map.  This was the first picture I took after thinking of doing a map progression series.  I asked my patrons for some map ideas, they gave me a lot.  The one that stuck out the most was a village sinking into the sea.  Love that.  So I sketched out a preliminary map, liked it, and began mapping.  

I started shading with some of the trees and buildings.  I want to find another technique on how to draw buildings from this perspective.  

Just a note on why I am using a newsprint magazine beneath.  I use the magazine to give myself a 'soft' surface to color on.  The reason I do this is it help to blend the colors and soften the harsh lines of the pencils.  Some of the outer shades I do on a hard surface to get it to pop.  

 

This shows part of how I try to add texture or shading to my map.  I use two colors not far off from one another.  For the trees I randomly color the area, leaving blank spaces for the second color and then blend in the two colors at the edges.  For the water, I use a lighter blue where it touches something or where it's shallow.  

You can see the finished color of the water.  The main color is too purple for my tastes.  I will claim doing this outside in the fading light as my reason, but I often do this with blues.  I need to find a better blue, a more blue color to go with the light blue edge/shallow water color.

Like the trees and water, when I am coloring in the grass or mud areas I try to give it a texture using a two color system.  But with the muddy area I kept it one color and allow the rock features to define the lake shore and give it texture. Plus, it is mud.  

All the photos before this were taken with my phone camera.  This picture is scanned into my computer.  In the northwest corner, there are a pair of round buildings.  I figured they were dovecotes.  And to give the map a little different color, I surrounded the dovecotes with a yellowish color.  Maybe it's hay.  Maybe it's dead grass from the pigeon poo.  

Here is what the final map.  I import my scanned map into a program called Xara.  I bevel the edge to give it depth and a frame.  Then I add the numbers and names.  I take two sets of numbers, turn one set white and bevel the edge to expand it.  ThenI nest the black numbers into the white set, it allows the eye to easily read the numbers and words.  Even when I use a weird font (I believe the one I used for this one is called BLOBS).  

Then I have to get writing.  Wrap my head around what kind of adventure I imagine could be found in The Sinking Village.