Best way to make backgrounds

[user9.7]

I struggle with drawing backgrounds, not because I don't know how to draw good enough, but I simply just dont know what the background could be, like just making it a simple Grey wall feels dull, but then making it an overdetailed setting takes away the focus from the character, any advice?

[Umber]

I am also a person who struggles with backgrounds. However, something I like to do in especially important/impactful scenes is to make the background a solid color, and/or some colored lines to help convey emotion or movement.

I'm not going to lie I think I overdid it on this one lol

But anyway, not including lines can also help to make specific panels more impactful:

In the third panel, the solid red background accentuates the importance of the words being said.

The biggest problem with this is that, especially in a fantasy comic, it's sometimes unclear what are the background lines and what is actual magic.

Also, one last thing: try not to overdo it—this is a piece of advice I think I need to listen to tbh. It should be something you do to add on to the piece instead of substituting backgrounds. Doing it too much will sometimes make the page feel really flat, rushed, and undetailed, like this one I did:

Anyway. I'm not a professional so take my advice with a grain of salt.

Yeah ! :]

[BoomerZ]

Backgrounds should be used to establish a location. After that they really don't matter much. Because of depth of field and how eyes work, you shouldn't be seeing a background when the foreground is the focus. If you want to have the background, make it simple on a separate layer then blur it. This allows the audience to see there is one but it's much simpler to do.

Another thing to make your backgrounds "real" is the little things. All rooms in homes have baseboard, wall electrical sockets, door hinges, the doors open onto a wall, put in crown molding, in the kitchen you should have a microwave and dishwasher: It's the little things that make it look lived in. Clutter and stuff just laying around. Don't use a perspective tool and have everything line up. The couches and TV might, but chairs will be moved and not parallel. Left over glasses for drinks on coffee tables. Outside, specially in the back of buildings is lights above exterior doors, door stops for the swing so door don't swing all the way open to hit walls, wood pallets are behind just about every commercial building as well as bollards so people don't back into the building. Stains in parking spots from oil. Make everything lived in. If you can, don't use the straight line tool unless you add some noise to it. No wall on any building is straight. none. specially corners.

Finally, know what the background is for in the panel. It's all well and good to do this massive, detailed city scape that is fantastic looking. But the reader will look at for 2 seconds or less and scroll on. If you must make a detailed panel, add some dialogue to slow the reader down so he sees what you drew. And always, always, always add your dialogue to a panel before you start drawing. Don't waste time drawing stuff covered my a dialogue balloon. It's a waste of your time.

[TheSingularitySeed]

I have the same problem! I think a lot about how and when to do a full background, a solid color background, or something completely different.

It's hard! Once I did a full bg and ended up not using it bcuz it didn't highlight the character enough. Definitely want to avoid that.

This is my own rough scale for how real I want my bg to be:

1. Establishing shots -- full bg
   Self-explanatory. Need to do the full render to establish everything. Need at least one per scene.

2. Character close ups -- rough bg
   Just a less detailed bg so the chara doesn't get lost in it.

3. Character thoughts -- solid color bg
   In a chara's thoughts, I want both them and their expression to be the highlight. I want the background to be as little of the focus as possible. Ofc then there's the problem of what color to use. Opposite colors? Mood colors? Monochrome?
   I just whack it with the hue/saturation sliders until something passable appears.

4. Character powers -- motif bg
   All my charas have an assigned motif that I draw whenever they use their fantasy powers. I think motifs also work well for chara thoughts and closeups.

5. Flashbacks and monologues -- something different
   These give me the biggest trouble. I want the bgs to be visually different from normal bgs to show the charas aren't in the same location mentally or physically. I still don't have a set way I like to do these.

Basically the more personal a panel is to a chara, the less I want a real bg.
I recommend looking through your art to see what patterns you naturally follow. That's how I came up with my own scale.
Edit: Not that this scale is unique or anything. Just that writing it down helped me realize my own preferences that I didn't notice before.

[kyupol]

Blurring background (or foreground) helps

A simple gradient can also help

Solid white bg with the character's cast shadow...

Or just plain solid white is good depending on context. In this panel it's "comic relief"

[ShidoDraws]

Tones is what you're looking for when it comes to backgrounds. This is why many artists suggest using contrasted colors. If you study professional works you'll notice that what makes characters pop up is usually the characters having bright colors compared to the background. And at times the backgrounds have bright colors. Though you could do neither and still don't break the emersion of the reader's attention to the character.

Well, it's a bit more nuance than just color theory but I would suggest studying professional works and pay attention to what they do. Sometimes backgrounds might just have too many details or it might need more details.

And if you just want to separate the character from the background, I recommend you to have a lightly airbrushed outline around your character to not let your character become one with the background. Though this is more of my personal favorite technique for my more professional work, I do see it being used in manga and sometimes manhwa. If you're a traditional artist then avoid letting your background line art touch your character line art.

Anyway, good luck!

[Lensing]

Depends on the style.
I grew up with Asterix & Tintin and similiar comics.
The same detailed backgrounds in almost every panel.
So if someone says only to use a background in the establishing
shot they are wrong in my opinion.

It helps me to take reference from my favorite comics / comics that
I want my work to look like and see how they did it. It´s often more simple
than I thought

[ThunderChicken]

I tend to overdo my backgrounds. Often I spend more time on backgrounds than I do the foreground. Every one of my drawings for my series are static 'scenes' though, and not a part of a comic sequence. I want them to appear as though somebody took a photograph of the scene being depicted, and I get a little silly with textures as well. Here's an example. These forums shrink images but you can still see the woodgrain on the table and floor, the corduroy on the couch and pillows, the pile on the carpet rug, etc.

You can actually get a decent background without spending a lot of time on it, though. This scene depicting snowmobiling in a snow storm has what I think came out as a nice and realistic looking background, but it only took a few minutes to draw:

When I do draw a comic, if it's basically just a head shot, I won't do a background at all, such as this frame (note that this is an outdoor winter scene so white actually works for the background. Were it summer I might have used a pale sky blue or green):