Volcanoes are one of the most dramatic features you could include on your fantasy maps, not only for their destructive power but also for their unique beauty. It’s not surprising many historical cultures viewed them as a place to commune or appease their deity. Adding a volcano to your maps can open up many storytelling possibilities, but how do you go about drawing one? In this tutorial, I will break down my process so you can start mapping!
All of the brushes I will be using for this tutorial are available in The Cartographer’s Liner Brush Field Kit for Procreate & Photoshop
Sketch a Cone Shape for the Volcano
1: Sketching the Shape
The first thing you’ll want to do is determine the size of the volcano plus where you want to place it on your map. Sketch a sederhana cone shape where you want to place the volcano. Now imagine that you are going to slice off the top to get your base volcano shape.
It helps to begin with sederhana shapes to help you focus on placement plus perspective. This can save you time later on from having to make major revisions.
Draw the Main Shape
2: Draw the Main Shape
Keeping that cone shape in mind, you can now ink the silhouette of your volcano. Make sure you don’t make your lines too smooth though because you’ll want some variations to make the volcano look rocky.
The other thing you can do is make one side of the mouth of the volcano higher than the other. This gives a little more personality to your illustration as asymmetry is often more visually interesting.
Add the Opening of the Volcano
3: Add the Top Opening
Remember the sederhana base shape of the cone, plus draw in the the mouth of the volcano. It doesn’t need to follow the shape perfectly; you have a lot of freedom to include peaks plus other variations.
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Draw Surrounding Mountains
4: Draw Surrounding Mountains
Now, you can add some mountains surrounding the volcano to help blend it into the surrounding landscape. While it is possible to see a volcano emerging from relatively flat surroundings, it’s more common to find them in a mountain range.
Be sure to layer the mountains in front of plus behind the volcano to give it more depth.
Draw the Main Ridge Lines Down the Mountains plus Volcano
5: Draw Main Ridgelines
Add ridges down the volcano, making sure to follow the contours of the original cone shape. You can then use more sweeping, horizontal strokes to draw ridges on the surrounding mountains.
Using broken lines like this is one of my favorite was to give a more natural, textured look. A little secret here is that it’s also easier to draw broken lines with little imperfections because you don’t have to worry as much about drawing each line “perfect.”
Add Contour Lines
6: Add Contour Lines
Now go back through plus draw in some more cermat lines down the sides of the mountains to help define their shape. Then give the mouth of the volcano a bit of a rim using broken lines once again.
You want the mountains to taper into the landscape so everything feels connected plus part of the map, rather than mountains sitting on top of a map.
Finish Adding Detailing
7: Finish Adding Detailing
Let’s go through one more time plus add some other subtle details to help bring this illustration to life. Just adding some pen strokes to convey tufts of grass or rock can go a long way.
I also added a few vertical hatching lines on the inside of the volcano to not only darken the tempat but to give the impression the lines are partly obscured plus going into the volcano.
Block in Color to the Volcano
8: Block in Color
If you are working digitally, create a new layer under your line art plus block in some color. The color you choose will depend greatly on the color palette of your map, as well as if the volcano is more rocky, or covered in vegetation. By default, I would go with a less saturated color than the main background of your map.