This is Tsaparang, the ruined capital of the ancient kingdom of Guge (10-17th century AD), 278 km south-southwest of Senggezangbo, or rather Shiquanhe, er, Ger, that is, Gar Dzong, Gar Town or just Gar. Sigh. Here's a video about the place; seems like a pretty crappy documentary that prattles a lot and looks at stuff, without really knowing anything. These bore me, so I didn't watch it.
Here is my map of Guge. Prepare to be underwhelmed:
Confusing, ain't it? I agree. A large part is due to the color scheme I planned for 12,000 foot elevations and over. It was fine when I did India, when only the edge of the Himalayas rose to that level (looked good, in fact); but with all of the map being dark umber and purple, it is hard to read if you're not actually looking at in on Publisher. Plus the grey regional borders disappear when applied to this map's color scheme. Not that orange borders wouldn't look horribly garish and unappealing.
Frankly, I've been having different problems with map coloring recently, as I'm working on odd places that don't fall into the usual climate/elevation ranges. More and more, I've begun to realize I need to spend a lot of time redoing old maps in order to bring them into a level of consistency that is beginning to fall apart as the overall map increases in size. This is a monumental task; there's little wonder I'm not anxious to apply myself, since it will only end in my having the same maps I already possess, just a little cleaner and somewhat better labeled.
I am right now thinking the very manner I remake the map has to incorporate a few new coloring techniques, that I'm not using at all right now ~ but which I think I learned from making those comics.
I'll make another confession. My India/Tibetan rivers are, well, wrong. Have been since the beginning; I based them on the elevation numbers I had and did not try to draw them from real maps. That's been true from the beginning of my map-making; for India, things went really sideways. Good luck finding the Sutlej River, where the city above is located. The valley of the Sutlej wound up being largely redirected east into the Ganges or north into the top of the Indus Valley, before it enters Ladakh.
At least I will know if someone tries to steal my maps, hm?
I am curious as to what the new coloring techniques you think you need to use are and what they are going to accomplish. I am using your elevation coloring scheme and finding it very useful so far, though maybe needing more granularity at higher elevations.
ReplyDeleteI also want to say that I am enjoying all of the content over the last few months, and have found this July's posts to be very useful.