Experimenting with Vintage Contour Textures

These are snapshots from a work in progress. I am trying to get a combination of factors right to kind-of/sort-of replicate the look of 19th century field-sketched maps of elevation.

I am still working on adding a directional aspect to them (not shown), so they incorporate a bit of a hillshade dimension, like this awesome map.

In the meantime, it’s too fun not to share. Here is a look at the good old US 48…

The Appalachians:

The Pacific Northwest:

The St. Lawrence Seaway:

What contour experiment would be complete without the obligatory map of Iceland?

You get some strange hairy effects when the lines get really dense or the hachure texture grows long. They remind me a little of Andy Woodruff’s mesmerizing elevation texture maps, and a bit of these vintage dense-contour elevation maps. But mostly they remind me of Burt Reynolds. Or a Shar-Pei…