Welcome back, Adepts- this is the Shady Cove (45x35), a rocky stretch of beach that's tucked into a rock wall but yet isn't quite a cave. I imagine it would be a likely place to find monsters laying eggs in the tide pool or perhaps smugglers stashing their goods away from prying eyes. Either way, your party probably has a job to do!
The layout here was inspired by Puffer Beach from Breath of the Wild, not an important or particularly eye-catching location but I thought it felt like a unique environment and took note. I like how it's more of an open cove rather than a tucked-away cave-like cove, just a little feature on a rocky beach and nothing more. I more or less tried to copy the layout from BotW with a few more rocks included for flavor as well as the little patch of sand in the water, which took the place of the large stretch of beach seen in the game separating the shady part from the ocean.
One of the fun things about these sandy maps is how much I don't have to outline, shading and coloring can do much of the heavy lifting.
Anyway, I decided to add in a fair bit of greenery at this point, starting with the palms (which were inevitable really) and later deciding that they looked a little awkward without at least a few additional plants. After sprinkling in some leafy greens around the boulders I then decided to include a bit of grass as well, though that's one detail I'm still a bit iffy about. I feel like I might try to add grass to these seaside maps a little more sparingly moving forward, it also looks a little awkward occasionally.
My wife told me that the dark part of the pillars (which stands in for where the pillars rise up into the ceiling) confused here and didn't read as such. My daughter wandered into the room and agreed but that's not surprising, she almost never understands what she's looking at in these maps. So, I don't have high hopes that this one will read well, which is a bummer, but it happens sometimes. Thoughts?
Beyond that, the colors here are largely the same as the previous, though much more shadowy and a little less vibrant maybe. It's always tricky to balance maps with large areas of shadow and light, but honestly I didn't feel like I struggled particularly hard with that part, mostly I futzed with the greens on the plants but that's nothing new for me.
On a different note, I'm going to be busy for much of the rest of the week so I will have much less time to work on next week's map. Deadlines are deadlines though so I'm going to have to find something I can reliably whip up with the time I've got, so you're likely getting a smaller map than you've been treated to over the last couple months. Sorry about that but that's life, huh? I'll return to my regular plus sized maps as soon as I get my regular schedule back, which might be April at this rate, just so you're up to date on what's going on with me.