Category: Work-In-Progress

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Vatican City: The Sacristy – 2nd Floor

If you’re wondering if you missed the first floor, you didn’t. I started with the second floor because it connects with the main floor of St. Peter’s Basilica. If you recall, there are quite a few steps leading up to the entrance of the basilica, so its main floor is higher than that of other buildings. It’s a little confusing and I’d estimate that there’s approximately a 100% chance that I’ll get emails asking if I connected the ground floor of one building with the second floor of another by mistake, but there’s nothing to be done about it.

Anyway, I’m going to push ahead and draw the other two floors of the sacristy next. I’ve got quite a bit done on the first floor and the third shouldn’t take too long after that.

All right, I’ll be back before long with some more Vatican!

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Vatican City: The Sacristy (Work-in-Progress)

Here’s the linework for the sacristy, or at least the middle floor of it. There’s a level above this and a level below. There’s an attic as well, which I’ll draw if I find out there are rooms in it. If it’s just bats and insulation, I’ll probably skip it.

The sacristy is where the clergy and choristers get ready before a mass. The vestments, chalices, candles, censers, and various other clerical equipment are kept here. This is also where the Vatican Treasury is located, as well as the Vatican Secret Archives. Today, most of the archives are in the Vatican Library and can be browsed by academics, but before that, they were all kept here.

By the way, here’s a fun fact: a few years back, Pope Francis changed the name of the Vatican Secret Archives to the Vatican Apostolic Archives, presumably in an effort to stop the spread of conspiracy theories and Dan Brown novels.

Well, there’s your Vatican update for the moment. I’m gonna get started on coloring this thing. If you’ve got any questions or thoughts, let me know!

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Vatican Grottoes (Work-in-Progress)

The Vatican Grottoes are mostly finished, but I’ve still got a bit more coloring to do. I wanted to show it to you now because, unfortunately, I’ve got a family emergency and I’m going to be away for a week to deal with it. I should be able to get this finished shortly after I get back.

All right, I’ve got to pack some things, so I’ll leave it at that. Be back soon.

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Village in a Ruined Temple (Work-in-Progress)

This is the village built in the ruins of an ancient megastructure that I mentioned earlier. I considered a few options for what the megastructure might be, but I ended up going with a huge temple to some ancient goddess. The thick walls are the original walls of the temple and the thinner walls are the houses built within the shell of the old ruin, probably using the rubble as building material. A garden in the atrium has been repurposed for crops and the reflecting pool of an old, broken fountain is used as a cistern.

Anyway, I’ll be coloring this for the next few days. Let me know what you think so far!

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St. Peter’s Basilica: Roof Level

Here’s another part of St. Peter’s Basilica finished. We’ve still got the grottoes and the Roman necropolis left to draw. And, of course, the rest of Vatican City. For reasons I explained here, I’ll be drawing in the backgrounds and surrounding buildings later. In the meantime, I hope the lack of surroundings doesn’t impede anyone’s ability to run adventures in the land of Catholicism.

By the way, I’m not planning to draw the roof levels of every building in the Vatican. I decided to draw this one because:

  1. There are numerous stairs to the roof.
  2. It’s a cool roof.
  3. The basilica is kind of the centerpiece of the Vatican.

But, like, I don’t think we need a map for the roof of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. If there’s another roof that’s worth drawing, I’ll draw it, but I’ll probably skip it for most places.

Next, I’ll be drawing last month’s Cartographic Congress winner, which is a medieval village built in the ruins of an ancient megastructure. I haven’t decided on the megastructure that the village is built on just yet, but it could be an ancient temple, a huge amphitheater or something like that. If you’ve got any ideas, let me know.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Let me know what you think!

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St. Peter’s Basilica Roof (Work-in-Progress)

Here are the lines for the roof of the St. Peter’s Basilica map. It’s probably a little hard to parse what you’re looking at here, especially since this roof– very unusually– has a number of features that are recessed into the roof (as seen here, on the right). Plenty of roofs have things sticking out, but recesses are pretty rare, since they tend to fill up with water. I’m not sure how they avoided that here, but they seem to have worked something out.

Anyway, I’m gonna get to work on coloring this tomorrow. At the moment, I am incredibly sick and I’m going to give my disease-ridden body a day to rest. All right, I’m going to go lie down.

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Floating City (Work-in-Progress)

Here are the drawings for the floating island city. As you can see from the sideview, there’s an underground level as well, which will be in the finished map. It’ll be like a tiny, flying underdark. A sort of “overdark,” if you will.

Anyway, I’m gonna start coloring this thing. Let me know what you think so far!