Vast canyons are awe inspiring. They thwart quests, halt armies, and tell the tale of vast cataclysms from times past. In this quick tutorial I’ll outline how to draw a canyon on your fantasy map. In this case I’ve drawn it in pencil on paper (I was feeling like going old school and tactile for this one) but the same tips apply if you’re using digital techniques.
Canyon
A canyon is a deep, narrow valley with steep sides. “ Canyon ” comes from the Spanish word cañon, which means “tube” or “pipe.” The term “ gorge ” is often used to mean “ canyon ,” but a gorge is almost always steeper and narrower than a canyon .
The movement of rivers , the processes of weathering and erosion , and tectonic activity create canyons .
River Canyons
The most familiar type of canyon is probably the river canyon . The water pressure of a river can cut deep into a river bed . Sediments from the river bed are carried downstream , creating a deep, narrow channel .
Rivers that lie at the bottom of deep canyons are known as entrenched rivers . They are entrenched because, unlike rivers in wide, flat flood plains , they do not meander and change their course.
The Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon in Tibet, a region of southwestern China, was formed over millions of years by the Yarlung Zangbo River . This canyon is the deepest in the world—at some points extending more than 5,300 meters (17,490 feet) from top to bottom. Yarlung Zangbo Canyon is also one of the world’s longest canyons , at about 500 kilometers (310 miles).
Weathering and Erosion
Weathering and erosion also contribute to the formation of canyons . In winter, water seeps into cracks in the rock. This water freezes. As water freezes, it expands and turns into ice . Ice forces the cracks to become larger and larger, eroding bits of stone in the process. During brief, heavy rains, water rushes down the cracks, eroding even more rocks and stone. As more rocks crumble and fall, the canyon grows wider at the top than at the bottom.
When this process happens in soft rock, such as sandstone , it can lead to the development of slot canyons . Slot canyons are very narrow and deep. Sometimes, a slot canyon can be less than a meter (3 feet) wide, but hundreds of meters deep. Slot canyons can be dangerous. Their sides are usually very smooth and difficult to climb.
Some canyons with hard, underlying rock may develop cliffs and ledges after their softer, surface rock erodes. These ledges look like giant steps.
Sometimes, entire civilizations can develop on and around these canyon ledges. Native American nations, such as the Hopi and Sinagua , made cliff dwellings . Cliff dwellings were apartment-style shelters that housed hundreds of people. The shaded, elevated ledges in Walnut Canyon and Canyon de Chelly, in Arizona, p rovided protection from hostile neighbors and the burning desert sun.
Hard-rock canyons that are open at one end are called box canyons . The Hopi and Navajo people often used box canyons as natural corrals for sheep and cattle . They simply built a gate on the open side of the box canyon , and closed it when the animals were inside.
Limestone is a type of hard rock often found in canyons . Sometimes, limestone erodes and forms caves beneath the earth. As the ceilings of these caves collapse, canyons form. The Yorkshire Dales , an area in northern England, is a collection of river valleys and canyons created by limestone cave collapses.
Tectonic Uplift
Canyons are also formed by tectonic activity . As tectonic plates beneath the Earth’s crust shift and collide, their movement can change the area’s landscape . Sometimes, tectonic activity causes an area of the Earth’s crust to rise higher than the surrounding land. This process is called tectonic uplift . Tectonic uplift can create plateaus and mountains. Rivers and glaciers that cut through these elevated areas of land create deep canyons .
The Grand Canyon , in the U.S. state of Arizona, is a product of tectonic uplift . The Grand Canyon , up to 447 kilometers (277 miles) long, 29 kilometers (18 miles) wide, and 1.8 kilometers (6,000 feet) deep, is the largest canyon in the United States. The Grand Canyon has been carved, over millions of years, as the Colorado River cuts through the Colorado Plateau . The Colorado Plateau is a large area that was elevated through tectonic uplift millions of years ago. Geologists debate the age of the canyon itself—it may be between 5 million and 70 million years old.
Canyons Reveal Earth’s History
Canyons are like silent journals of an area’s history over thousands or even millions of years. By studying the exposed layers of rock in a canyon wall, experts can learn about how the climate changed, what kind of organisms were alive at certain times, and perhaps even how the canyon may change in the future.
For example, geologists studying layers of rock in the Columbia River Gorge , in the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon, discovered that the oldest rocks there are at least 17 million years old. They also found out the rocks are dark-black basalt , made from hardened lava . From this, geologists determined that the rocks formed when volcanoes erupted and their lava spilled out onto the land. Over millions of years, the Columbia River and Ice Age glaciers cut through the area and exposed its volcanic beginnings.
Canyons are also important to paleontology , or the study of fossils . Fossils are often best preserved in dry, hot areas. Since canyons usually form under the same conditions, they are good places to examine fossils .
The layers of sediment revealed by a canyon can make it easier to date fossils . For example, a new area of dinosaur tracks was discovered in the U.S. state of Utah at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in 2009. These tracks reveal new information about a group of dinosaurs called ornithopods. Paleontologists analyzed the layers of rock surrounding the fossils to estimate how old they were. These new dinosaur tracks show that ornithopods were alive 20 million years earlier than scientists thought.
Geologists study canyons to determine how the landscape will change in the future. The erosion patterns and thickness of different layers can reveal the climate during different years. A series of very dry years will have very thin layers of rock, when little erosion took place. The overall pattern of erosion and layering reveals the rate of water flow, from both the river and rain, through a canyon .
Geologists estimate that the Grand Canyon , for example, is being eroded at a rate of 0.3 meters (1 foot) every 200 years. The Colorado Plateau , the geologic area where the Grand Canyon is located, is a very stable area. Geologists expect the Grand Canyon to continue to deepen as long as the Colorado River flows.
Submarine Canyons
Some of the deepest canyons lie beneath the ocean. These submarine canyons cut into continental shelves and continental slopes —the edges of continents that are underwater.
Some submarine canyons were carved by rivers that flowed during periods when the sea level was lower, and the continental shelves were exposed. The Hudson Canyon extends 750 kilometers (450 miles) into the Atlantic Ocean, from the mouth of the Hudson River , in the U.S. states of New York and New Jersey. At least part of the Hudson Canyon was the river bed during the last ice age , when sea levels were much lower.
Submarine canyons can also develop when powerful ocean currents sweep away sediments . Just as rivers erode land, these currents carve deep canyons in the ocean floor. Strong currents of the Atlantic Ocean prevent Whittard Canyon , about 400 kilometers (248 miles) south of the coast of Ireland, from filling with sediment . Scientists studying Whittard Canyon believe glacial water mixed with seawater to rush into the submarine canyon thousands of years ago.
The formation of some submarine canyons is still a mystery. Monterey Canyon is a deep submarine canyon off the coast of the U.S. state of California. It has been compared to the Grand Canyon because of its size. It is 152 kilometers (95 miles) long and 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) deep at its deepest point. Geologists still aren’t certain how Monterey Canyon was formed. One theory is that the canyon was formed by an ancient outlet of the Sacramento or Colorado Rivers . Another theory is that it was formed by tectonic activity —an earthquake splitting apart the rock with enormous force. Scientists believe the canyon was formed 25 million to 30 million years ago.
The depth of submarine canyons makes them hard to explore. Scientists usually use remotely operated vehicles ( ROVs ) to conduct studies. Sometimes, they can use a submersible , a special kind of submarine . The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) uses a vehicle called Ventana to explore Monterey Canyon. Through the Ventana and other research vehicles, MBARI scientists have discovered new species of organisms living in the canyon , from tiny sea anemones to giant squid .
Surf’s Down!
Surfing is much more than just “riding the waves”; it starts with what lies beneath. The seafloor transforms ordinary waves into good waves . and good waves into great surfing. Bathymetry, or measuring the depth and rise of the seafloor, is important to good surfers.
If there is a steep ascent of the ocean floor near the beach, it will cause waves to rise more quickly, and become bigger. If, however, the ocean floor has a slow and gradual ascent, the waves will come in more slowly, and not break as big.
The famous El Porto surf area off the coast of Los Angeles, California, United States, is a good example of how big waves develop. An underwater canyon focuses the energy of underwater currents, and the canyon’s steep walls cause waves to rise quickly, producing huge, powerful waves.
Valles Marineris
The largest canyon in the solar system isn’t found on Earth. Valles Marineris is a canyon system on Mars that is 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) long, 600 kilometers (372 miles) wide, and, in some places, 10 kilometers (6 miles) deep.
The Grand Canyon, in contrast, is 447 kilometers (277 miles) long, 29 kilometers (18 miles) wide, and 1.8 kilometers (6,000 feet) deep.
Draw the canyon’s river
In the real world, canyons are generally created by millennia of being worn down by rivers. If your world has canyons created by tectonic upheaval, magical disaster, or comet strikes – you’ll still end up with a river. Water runs downhill, so you’re going to end up with a river running through your canyon. So start by drawing the path of the river. You can add little feeder tributaries here.
Remember that any feed tributaries should all come in pointing in the direction the river is flowing.
Draw the cliff tops
We’re going for a big canyon here. So, the cliff tops around the canyon are going to be some distance back from the river. Here I take a jagged line, and draw an unbroken edge that sort of follows the shape of the river. This is the are that is the same height as the surrounding land.
We need to clearly show there’s a difference to the terrain on each side of the cliff edge (very similar to technique 3 from this tutorial). We can use line work to do this. Start by drawing radiating lines from the cliff into the canyon. Think of these as spurs of rock from the top of the cliff right down to the ground. Don’t run them all the way to the bottom of the canyon. This gives the impression of the vertical cliffs softening out into the flatter base of the canyon. If, instead, you want to have a canyon that feels like it drops vertiginously right to the river bed, keep the lines going almost to the river itself (more like this chasm tutorial).
Along the top, we’re going to do the opposite. Here we use lighter line weights, and lay in unconnected detail lines that run parallel-ish to the cliff top. This gives the impression of light wear along the cliff top, and softens the hard cliff edge.
Add tone and shading to add depth
We can actually leave it at the line art stage. If you added a label ‘Canyon of Corpses’ or similar, the reader would know precisely what they were looking at and could follow it across the whole map.
But we’re going to go one step further and add some tone to deepen the canyon. This is done in three steps.
4.1 Block in the canyon floor
A simple trick here is to make the full canyon a little darker than everything else – that will push it into the background and indicate it’s deeper than the surrounding terrain. If you’re using colour, you can also move it a little towards blue/grey and knock down the saturation. That’ll push it into the background.
I’ve used light pencil strokes here. But if you’re using photoshop or Gimp, you can use a hard round brush on 5-10% opacity. If that means nothing to you, there’s a walkthrough of cast shadows in this Gimp/Photoshop tutorial.
4.2 Block in the hard cast shadows from the cliffs
This is a deep canyon – so the cliffs will cast a hard shadow. The best trick here is to basically pencil in your cliff top line, but moved half a centimeter down and right. Then fill in any area that would be within the canyon outline. This is the simple, clean, cast shadow from the cliff top. You can see this in real life in this satellite view of the Grand Canyon (I’ve been a lot less drastic with my cast shadow):
4.3 Add in detail shadows along the cliff edges
The cast shadows are part of the story, but you need to spend time working shadows into all the cliff edges to get the look right. A few tips will help here:
- the darkest shadows are always closest to the top of the cliff where the cliff is steepest
- block in sections of shadows as fairly flat sided blocks
- use your edge lines from step 3 as the edges of your shadows
4.4 Darken the cliff lines
With all this shading you’re likely to notice that you’re losing definition on the cliff edges. That’s an easy fix. Go back over the cliff edges to darken those lines. Don’t just draw over the whole cliff edge, but focus on places where the shadows are darkest beside it. When the line weight, and the shadow, are pulling together, it’ll look great.
And there you have it – a full blown canyon. The first three steps are easy – and the shading part just takes a little practice.
