Make an Engraved Mountain Heights Chart (Data Visualization)

Open Lopsy. In the New Document dialog, set Width to 2400 and Height to 1600 pixels, keep the White background and click Create. A wide 3:2 sheet gives the range plenty of room.

1. Select Background, set the foreground colour to #EDE2C4 and choose Edit → Fill.
2. Run Filter → Add Noise… with Amount 5, Mono and Gaussian.
3. Rename Layer 1 to Foxing and run Filter → Clouds… at Scale 4. In the layer effects drawer, set its blend mode to Multiply, then set the layer's opacity to 7%. That gives you a faint, uneven age stain.

An engraving is printed by pressing a copper plate into damp paper, which leaves a dented "plate mark" just inside the edge. Fake one:

1. Add a layer called Plate Mark.
2. Draw a rectangular marquee about 22 px in from every edge and fill it with #A8936C.
3. Draw a second marquee 3 px inside the first and press Delete. That leaves a thin frame.
4. Run Filter → Gaussian Blur… at 2, set the layer to Multiply, and set its opacity to 55%.

Engravers built every tone from lines. You'll make five line tiles and save each one with Edit → Define Pattern, which captures the marquee area of the active layer. Add a scratch layer called Tiles and use ink #1E1A16:

1. Pattern 1, close rules. Fill a marquee 24 px wide and 2 px tall. Then draw a 24 × 8 marquee with the strip across its middle and choose Define Pattern.
2. Pattern 2, close diagonal hatching. Pick the Brush at Size 3 and Hardness 100. Draw a row of parallel 45° lines running down to the right: click at the top of each line and Shift+click at the bottom. Start each line 8 px to the right of the last one (watch X in the Info panel). Draw a 16 × 16 marquee in the middle of the block and define it.
3. Pattern 3, the same leaning the other way. Draw a second block of lines running up to the right and define a 16 × 16 square from it. You'll lay this over Pattern 2 to make cross-hatching.
4. Pattern 4, open rules. A 2 px strip in a 24 × 12 box.
5. Pattern 5, open diagonal hatching. Lines 12 px apart, captured as a 24 × 24 square.

Because the line spacing divides evenly into each tile, the patterns repeat without seams. Delete the Tiles layer when you're done; the patterns stay available.

Select Plate Mark and add these layers, from bottom to top:

• Sky Rules, Grid, Clouds and Peaks Fill
• Snow and Wash
• Lit Hatch, Shadow Hatch and Outline

The mountains are drawn back to front, tallest first, so each smaller peak overlaps the one behind it. Start with Everest, centred at x 1325 with its summit at y 352. Its base is about 600 px wide and sits on the shoreline. Pick the Lasso and draw the silhouette, adding a few small notches on each slope so it looks like rock.

Select Peaks Fill, set the foreground to #E9DDBE and choose Edit → Fill.

With the silhouette still selected, click Lit Hatch, Shadow Hatch and Outline in turn and press Delete on each. That clears anything a taller peak left behind this one, which matters from the second peak onwards.

Make the outline on Outline:

1. Choose Select → Grow… by 1 and fill with ink.
2. Choose Select → Shrink… by 2 and press Delete.

That leaves a crisp 2 px line.

The light comes from the upper left, so the left side of each peak is lit. Narrow the selection to the lit face below the snow:

1. Hold Shift+Alt and lasso everything below a zigzag drawn across the range at 15,700 ft (y 782). This intersects the selection.
2. Hold Alt and lasso the right-hand shadow face. Run the lasso from the summit down a slightly wandering ridge to the base, out to the right base corner, and back up the right slope. This subtracts it.

On Lit Hatch, choose Edit → Fill with Pattern… and pick Pattern 4 (open rules). Then darken the lower half:

1. Shift+Alt lasso everything below a zigzag halfway up the peak, press Delete, and fill with Pattern 1.
2. Shift+Alt lasso a narrow band along the foot and fill with Pattern 2. The diagonal lines over the rules cross-hatch the foothills.

Now lasso the shadow face on its own, with no modifier. Zoom in and follow the same ridge as before, then hug the right-hand outline. The outline on top hides small wobbles.

On Shadow Hatch:

1. Fill the face with Pattern 5.
2. Shift+Alt the below-snow zigzag, press Delete and fill with Pattern 2.
3. Shift+Alt the lower half and add Pattern 3 on top.

The shadow side now goes from open hatching in the snow to dense cross-hatching at the base.

Press Ctrl+D to deselect, then select Outline. With the Brush at Size 3, click the summit and Shift+click down the ridge between the two faces. Switch to Size 4 and Shift+click down the right-hand slope. Engravers cut shadow edges deeper, and the thicker line does the same job.

Draw K2 next, at x 1185 with its summit at y 377, then Aconcagua at x 1525, summit y 552. For each one, repeat everything from the Lasso in "Set up the layers and lasso the first peak" through "Add the ridge and a heavier shadow edge". You don't need to add the layers again.

The Delete at the start of each peak is what makes this work. Whatever is inside the new silhouette is wiped from the hatch and outline layers first, so the new mountain cleanly blocks the lines of the ones behind it.

Carry on in height order. Here are the centre lines, with each summit worked out from the scale:

• Chimborazo x 1638 (y 626) and Denali x 1745 (y 633)
• Kilimanjaro x 1050 (y 665) and Elbrus x 935 (y 692)
• Popocatépetl x 1842 (y 714) and Mont Blanc x 820 (y 780)
• Matterhorn x 704 (y 815) and Rainier x 1925 (y 824)
• Fuji x 586 (y 889) and Olympus x 468 (y 980)
• Washington x 2050 (y 1087) and Ben Nevis x 350 (y 1147)

Make each base roughly 90 px wide plus half the peak's height in pixels. Give the volcanoes (Fuji, Kilimanjaro, Popocatépetl, Chimborazo and Rainier) smooth, concave slopes with a small flat crater top, and make the Matterhorn and K2 sharp horns.

That's the whole range in black and white, and it already reads as a chart. The tallest peaks stand in the middle, where the two hemispheres meet.

Hold Ctrl (or Cmd on a Mac) and click the Peaks Fill thumbnail to load the whole range as a selection. Then hold Alt and lasso everything below the same snow zigzag you used for the hatching. What's left is every summit above 15,700 ft.

Select Snow and fill with #F8F4E8, a little whiter than the paper.

Colourists laid on flat washes, one band at a time. Do the same on Wash:

1. Forest. Ctrl/Cmd-click the Peaks Fill thumbnail. Shift+Alt lasso everything below a slightly wavy line at 5,000 ft (y 1128), and fill with #7C9A62.
2. Rock. Ctrl/Cmd-click again and Shift+Alt lasso below 13,000 ft (y 870). Then Alt lasso below 5,000 ft, keeping this line a few pixels below the first one so the bands overlap slightly and no paper gap opens up. Fills on the same layer simply replace each other, so the overlap is invisible. Fill with #CFA968.
3. Crags. Load the range once more, Shift+Alt the below-snow zigzag, Alt lasso below 13,000 ft (again a touch low), and fill with #A8998A.

Deselect, open the layer effects drawer for Wash, set it to Multiply, and set its opacity to 70%. The ink lines show through the colour, just as they would under real watercolour.

Engravers drew skies as fine horizontal rules that thin out towards the horizon.

1. Select Sky Rules and draw a marquee from x 232 to x 2168 (just inside where the scale bars will go), from y 290 down to the shoreline. Fill it with Pattern 4, then deselect.
2. Click Add Mask at the bottom of the Layers panel, then click the mask thumbnail (Edit mask for Sky Rules).
3. Pick the Gradient tool and open Advanced…. Set the stops to black on the left and white on the right.
4. Drag from just above the shoreline (y 1240) straight up to the top of the sky.

Click the layer's own row to leave mask editing, then set its opacity to 45%. The ruling should be lighter than the mountains so the peaks stand forward.

Now add the height lines on Grid:

1. Set the Brush to Size 4, then click Open brush presets and set Spacing to 200 on the Shape tab. Use colour #5B4A39.
2. Shift+click dotted lines across the chart at 5,000 (y 1128), 10,000 (y 967), 20,000 (y 643), 25,000 (y 482) and 30,000 ft (y 320). Leave out 15,000 ft, because the snow line will sit just above it.
3. Add one vertical dotted line at x 1457, the low point between Everest and Aconcagua, to divide the hemispheres.
4. Set Spacing back to 1 afterwards.

On Clouds, build a cumulus from overlapping ovals:

1. Draw one Elliptical Marquee, then hold Shift while you add five more: a few round puffs on top and one long flat oval underneath.
2. Hold Alt and drag a rectangle across the bottom to slice it flat.
3. Fill with #F3ECDA, then add Pattern 4.
4. Shift+Alt a rectangle over the lower third, fill it with the paper colour again, and add Pattern 1, so the underside is darker.
5. Add a second, smaller cloud near the top of the sky, just right of the hemisphere divider.
6. Deselect and give the layer a Stroke effect, 2 px in ink.

Select Outline and add a layer called Scale.

1. Fill two bars 16 px wide, running from 30,000 ft (y 320) down to the shoreline. Put the left one at x 214 and the right one at x 2170.
2. Draw a marquee just inside the left bar covering the 0–1,000 ft segment. Then hold Shift and add the same for 2,000–3,000, 4,000–5,000 and so on up both bars. Each segment is 32.3 px tall.
3. Fill with #F3ECDA. The bars become a classic striped scale.
4. With the Brush at Size 3, Shift+click a short tick on the outside of each bar every 5,000 ft.

1. Sea. Add a layer called Sea. Fill a strip from the shoreline down to y 1345 across the whole chart with #C7D2CD, add Pattern 1, and draw a 4 px ink coastline along its top.
2. Snow line. Add a layer called Snow Line. Set the Brush to Size 5, Spacing 220 and colour #A3312A, and Shift+click one dotted red line across the chart at 15,700 ft (y 782).
3. Frame. Add a layer called Border. Make each rule by filling a rectangle and then deleting a slightly smaller one inside it.

For the frame, make a 10 px rule 48 px in from the canvas edge and a 2 px rule 20 px inside that. Then add a 3 px frame round the chart itself, from x 120 to 2280 and from y 288 to 1347.

Add a layer called Corner Ornament. Over the top-left corner of the heavy rule:

1. Fill a 44 px square with ink.
2. Shrink it by 5 and fill with paper.
3. Shrink by 5 again and fill with ink.

Draw a marquee just around the square and switch to the Move tool. Grab the rotation handle beside a corner and drag it round to 45°. On a Mac, hold Cmd while you drag so the angle snaps in 15° steps. Then press Ctrl+D to commit.

Marquee the diamond, press Ctrl+C, then Ctrl+V. The copy is pasted in place as a new layer. Drag it with the Move tool to the top-right corner of the heavy rule, then paste and drag twice more for the bottom corners.

When all four are placed, select the copy just above Corner Ornament and choose Layer → Merge Down. Repeat until the four diamonds are on one layer.

A period chart loved a curiosity. Gay-Lussac's 1804 balloon ascent reached 23,018 ft, higher than any person had climbed. Select Corner Ornament and click New Group, rename the group Balloon, and add a layer called Balloon Envelope inside it.

1. Draw an elliptical marquee about 72 × 88 px, centred at x 1975 and y 462.
2. Shift+lasso a short cone under it.
3. Fill with paper.
4. Hold Alt and drag an oval offset up and to the left of the envelope. That leaves a crescent on the right.
5. Fill the crescent with Pattern 2 for the shadow.
6. Deselect and add a 3 px ink Stroke effect.

On a new Balloon Rigging layer, use the Brush at Size 3:

1. Draw three gores down the envelope. Build each one from three or four short Shift+click segments that bow outward.
2. Shift+click two ropes down to the basket.
3. Fill a small basket in #4A3524, with its bottom exactly at 23,018 ft (y 546).
4. With Spacing 200, Shift+click a dotted line from the basket to the right scale bar, so the height can be read off the scale.

Select Corner Ornament again, add a group called Peak Labels, and add a layer called Leaders inside it. With Leaders selected, choose the Text tool and set its options before you click the canvas: Old Standard TT, Style Italic, Size 21 and Align Center. In the Text panel, set Line height to 1.3.

For each peak, drag a text box above its summit and type two lines: the name, then the height (for example Everest / 29,032 ft.). Name each layer after its peak, such as Everest Label. Seat the labels consistently:

• Centre each label over its summit, with 20 px of air between the bottom of the height and the peak.
• Where a neighbour or a slope is in the way, raise the label by one or two label heights (about 56 px each). Then draw a thin leader line straight down to the summit on Leaders with the Brush at Size 3. Matterhorn, Kilimanjaro, Denali, Rainier, Washington and Ben Nevis need one.
• Everest is too close to the top of the frame, so set its label just to the right of the summit.
• Two labels side by side at the same height can read as one line. Keep at least 70 px between them, or stagger them.

First tidy the margins. On Sea, marquee the two narrow strips outside the scale bars and press Delete, so the figures will sit on bare paper.

Select Corner Ornament, add a group called Captions, and add an empty layer called Caption Anchor inside it. With the anchor selected, new text layers land inside the group.

For the left scale (Feet Left), choose Old Standard TT, Style Normal, Size 18 and Align Right. Drag a tall text box in the margin left of the bar and type one figure per line: 30,000, 25,000, 20,000, 15,000, 10,000, 5,000, 0.

In the Text panel, set Line height to 1.25 and Paragraph spacing to 139. Each line then advances 22.5 + 139 = 161.5 px, which matches the 5,000 ft spacing of the ticks. Nudge the block with the arrow keys until 30,000 is centred on the top tick. Make a left-aligned copy for the right scale and call it Feet Right.

Then add the rest:

• Snow-line caption. In Old Standard TT Italic, 19 px, carmine #A3312A: "Limit of perpetual snow / under the Equator, 15,700 ft." Put it in the clear sky just above the red line at the left.
• Balloon caption. "Gay-Lussac's / balloon, 1804 / 23,018 ft." in 18 px italic beside the balloon.
• Hemisphere captions. EASTERN HEMISPHERE and WESTERN HEMISPHERE at 20 px with Letter spacing 6. Centre each under its half of the chart, either side of the divider.

Select Corner Ornament, add a group called Title, and add a layer called Title Rules inside it. Create three centred text layers:

1. Title Kicker. "A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THE" in Old Standard TT at 26 px with Letter spacing 10.
2. Title Main. "Principal Mountains" in Playfair Display SC Black (900) at 92 px with Letter spacing 4. The small-caps face turns it into PRINCIPAL MOUNTAINS.
3. Title Script. "of the World, with their Heights above the Sea" in Pinyon Script at 50 px.

Keep about 20 px between the script's descenders and the chart frame.

On Title Rules, Shift+click a pair of thin rules on each side of the kicker with the Brush. Lasso a small diamond at each outer end and fill it.

Solid black capitals look modern. Period title lettering was outlined and filled with fine hatching:

1. Select Title Main and click Duplicate Layer at the bottom of the Layers panel.
2. Click Rasterize Layer on the copy and rename it Title Engraved.
3. Hide Title Main with its eye icon.
4. Ctrl/Cmd-click the Title Engraved thumbnail to select the letters.
5. Choose Select → Shrink… by 3.

Press Delete to clear the inside of the letters, leaving a 3 px outline. Then choose Edit → Fill with Pattern… and pick Pattern 2. The diagonal hatching fills only the hollowed letters, so you get engraved, shaded capitals that still read from across the room.

Select Corner Ornament, add a group called Legend, and add a Legend Swatches layer inside it. Make four 56 × 38 swatches in a row along the bottom. Fill each with the colour its band actually shows on the chart, which is the wash multiplied over the paper at 70%:

• forest #95A06C
• rock #CAA96F
• crags #B19F81
• snow #F8F4E8

Add Pattern 1 to the first two and Pattern 4 to the third, so they look like the hatched slopes.

For the keylines:

1. Drag a marquee 2 px larger than the first swatch.
2. Alt+drag the swatch itself out of it, leaving a thin frame.
3. Do the same for the other three swatches, holding Shift for each outer rectangle so it adds to the selection.
4. Fill the selection with ink.

Add a short red dotted sample of the snow line as the fifth key.

Label each key in 18 px italic:

• "Forest & pasture / below 5,000 ft."
• "Rock & scree / 5,000–13,000 ft."
• "Bare crags / 13,000–15,700 ft."
• "Perpetual snow / above 15,700 ft."
• "Snow-line at / the Equator"

Set REFERENCES to the left of the swatches with Letter spacing 5, vertically centred on them. Finish with a one-line italic footnote centred under the legend: "The heights are given in English feet above the level of the sea, from modern surveys; the horizontal distances are arbitrary." A good chart always says where its numbers came from.

Lettering over ruled lines is hard to read, and an engraver simply didn't cut lines behind the words. Do the same:

1. Draw a rectangular marquee around the first peak label, about 8 px larger than the type on every side.
2. Hold Shift and add one for every other peak label, plus the snow-line and balloon captions.
3. Select Sky Rules and press Delete, then select Grid and press Delete.
4. Deselect.

The words now sit in clean paper, and the plate is finished.