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Jun 2017

What's your process for drawing backgrounds?

EXAMPLE:

I usually draw them as I would a character: sketch, lineart, color, basic shading. However, I'm not particularly satisfied with the way my backgrounds come out once they're finished (I have to force myself to just roll with it). I've tried to "paint" my backgrounds but those attempts looked just terrible.

I'd really like to get better. What's your "secret" to a beautiful background and/or any advice on how to make amateur ones look appealing? Thank you! :nerd:

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    Jun '17
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    Jul '17
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I'm not the best, but I've discovered that laying out a perspective grid36 really helps out with laying out the foundation of the background/setting. It works best if you sketch what you generally want in that panel, then lay out the lines. Doing quick photo studies, and life sketches of your surroundings also helps with improving.

Good luck!

Generally, I just put a gradient which makes for a quick, easy, nice background.
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But when I do more complex backgrounds, I usually look at reference pictures to get the colors and everything else right:

But I also agree with using perspective grids for 3-D backgrounds.

i think the 'secret' to beautiful backgrounds prolly lies in the composition more than anything. also, levels. levels are veeery important.

id recommend looking at cinematography (particularly in animation) for some ideas on improving backgrounds. when the background lines up to make the image more legible and the flow work, its significantly more satisfying to look at.

similarly, having good, clear levels helps an image have impact and clarity. so like, in the thumbnailing process of a drawing, make up the dark and light areas, in basic shapes. this should help in getting the composition down. in practice, that could turn your background there into something like this:


(except like better bc its not a doodle)

see how the dark areas frame it, and the lightest area is where the action is, drawing the eye? i also did a vague sunbeam effect, that shows like steven universe are very good at using. this gives the image an atmosphere that adds to the life of it.

i think its really helpful to zoom out to thumbnail size to see how a drawing is doing for these things.

also, its looking a little sparse? maybe add more stuff, like i added a tree and rope swing (altho thats speculating on what the scene is) for interest

Adding texture might be a good idea! You could easily add some shading on the grass and some shingles on the roof to differentiate them from the smoother surfaces.

I look at photos to get an idea of what things look like in real life and plan what I want in my own. Then I decide where the horizon line should be in my drawing and make sure I am using a perspective grid. I also make sure to make things that are closer have a heavier line weight and more detail, and stuff farther away have thinner lines and less detail. Another thing you can do is fade out or put an overlay of the atmosphere color over stuff that is farther away. It is a subtle thing that helps establish distance.

In all seriousness, though, references are your best friend.

Also one method I like using to differentiate the bg from the main characters:
1. Make the bg one layer (lineart, color, everything - i like to make a duplicate of the layers before combining)
2. Make sure you have two layers of bg art (for me, this is the combined layer above original layer)
3. Gaussian blur the top layer (6-10px works fine)
4. Lower the opacity of the blurred top layer (depends on how distant you want your bg to be)

This leads to a nice faded effect that retains the features of the non-blurred bg layer (btw I didn't trace this one from a screenshot lol)

Here's an example so you can see what I'm talking about.

My comic has a simple style so I wanted simple, colourful backgrounds that wouldn't overwhelm the main action (they're not really doing much in this picture but you know what I mean). You can see that the action is outlined but the background isn't.

Also my colour scheme is simple pastels, often with a lot of grey. I try to make the background paler and if there are brighter colours, such as the red bus stop, to use them sparingly, to block them and not let them clash with what's going on.

I think it'd depend on what effect you were trying to achieve though. I'm (clearly) not trying to create suspense or a sense of urgency with my comic as you might with horror or action through internal framing, chiaroscuro, shading and such like.

It looks like you're not paying much attention to architectural detail. You understand that houses are built from basic geometric shapes but you're not playing around with more intricate shapes or structural supports which add infinite levels of interest to a building. Windows don't have to be square. Not all windows on the same building have to be the same shape and size. A building doesn't have to be a rectangle, you can add curves and little 'castle domes'. A door doesn't have to connect immediately to the lawn, it can have a little archway you walk through to get to it. You can have an upstairs balcony that is connected to the ground level via a staircase on the front. There's millions of ideas to play with.

Like Kayke mentioned, texture is a big player. I was at a convention recently and I was approached by a former teacher who is an editor and had done work for Marvel in the past. He struck up a conversation about texture in my work (had a folder to flip through with old and new artwork) and noted to me that the older images suffered from being too smooth. He told me that texture is one of the biggest areas where artist fall. Visually detailing the difference between surfaces is what takes an image from being "amateur" to something much more polished. This is disregarding whether you colour or use black and white, both mediums are capable of depicting texture. It's a matter of trial and error to discover methods that work for you.

People mention photo references but the point is to pay close attention. When you go out, just start considering what objects randomly line your street. Garbage bins, street lights, people, stay animals, corner stores, city landscaping etc. Then start cataloging in your mind the various looks at different houses. Don't use one just one photo to draw one house. Use 5 or 10, draw inspiration from features they all have. In no time you'll be able to start designing interesting architecture on the fly.

Other things that help bring interest to an architectural background is observation of flora, too. You can draw your average generico brand tree and shrubs in every picture for your gardens and city landscaping or you can pay attention to how landscapers actually design them. Google is your friend, start looking up flower and tree varieties and then google for the specific type you want for a bunch of photo refs. Just look at these two and compare:

Oak tree:
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Oak leaf close up:

Indian Mast Tree:

Indian Mast Tree leaf close up:

Even trees that do look relatively the same from afar will have different trunk and branching structures, and different shaped leaves and sizes. So even if you're drawing the "generico" tree, at least pick out the type of tree you're drawing on google to give it some amount of believable detail. The only time you see a bunch of trees that are exact same type is in a forest where they establish "colonies." However they'll always be mixed in with other tree and plant species competing for space and light, all you're seeing is that the forest is more heavily dominated by one type of plant. (There's only one known forest on earth colonized by one type of tree, so, pretty damn rare.) City landscaping might row a bunch of the same type of trees down a street, they're usually selected for looks and/ or scent. But there's also a caveat to drawing a bunch of the same type of tree: they don't all grow at the exact same rates, vary the heights and even canopy shape, they don't branch the exact same either. Diversity is the spice of life here.

This is the first page from my comic. I designed this house myself after pulling inspiration from about 10 different medieval and modern day houses. It's admittedly bland even then, but purposefully so for the culture/ world they live in.

It's far from perfect but the point is to show that medium and method is largely irrelevant for backgrounds. The point is really to just open your mind to the world around you and start observing more closely. From the grass to the house to the trees and sky, nothing within those subjects are static, they all have something to vary them. The clouds are fluffy cumulus mixed with stratus. You have an oak and willow tree. You have crawling vines, clover, wild flower and delphinium in the garden. The house is a mix of wood, stone and plaster. The windows on the second floor have detailed designs, the first floor are simple arches. The house is a standard rectangle but a balcony and small extension wings make it a little more interesting.

@MinNCompany @spudfuzz Omigod these are gorgeous! :heart_eyes:

Thank you guys!! You've all been super helpful! :grin::nerd:

A little info on the said image: It's mainly a backdrop for a set of five individual text-squares that begin the prologue to my comic. The image is a view of a neighborhood before sunrise (though the lighting is really off, I know).

@punkarsenic I honestly haven't been using thumbnails (just mental ones)... I should probably start planning out my work a little better.

@spudfuzz Your reply was really thorough. Thank you for going into such great detail!

@Kayke I usually do use textures (like for paper effects, etc.), but I'm trying to avoid turning the use of textures into a crutch, y'know?

thumbnails are soooo helpful for figuring out compositions and detail, theyre defo worth doing

I meant more like drawing textured on to show different surfaces. My comics are fairly stylized, so this example isn't very realistic, but you can see I replicated some of the blade texture the grass would have, the pitted texture of the sidewalk, and left the blacktop smooth.

It's not a lot, but it helps add some visual interest and hints at how the surfaces are different.

Three big things I would say:

1) take the time to think about structure. Starting a building without perspective is like trying to draw a human without sketching. It doesn't have to always be a FULLY RULERED GRID but even a sketch perspective is better than nothing!

2) replace symbolism with specific things. With backgrounds it's weirdly easy to assume you know what a thing looks like -- like, windows are just a square with a plus sign in them, right? But that's not a window -- that's not even a simple window. It's a symbol that our brain made for windows. This isn't about simplicity vs realism, either -- it's about looking at what things REALLY look like and then deciding what details to keep and what to simplify. You can definitely do a simplified window frame, and it still looks LOADS more solid than just a rectangle!

3) nothing is perfect. Oddly the thing that I've found adds a ton to backgrounds is to look for opportunities to make things imperfect -- tack a sign unevenly to that telephone pole, put some askew papers and pencils on that desk, throw some dirty clothes over the chair, have some grass growing up between the cracks of a sidewalk -- that sort of thing. The trick of this is that it requires thinking about what else might be in this environment -- and those details make it feel like a real, lived-in place.

Folks talking about foreground vs background elements and composition and values are also spot-on!!! but these are some small basic things that help me. I feel like you could change very little in this picture, and make a big difference just by making all the elements feel more solid and thought-out:

Wow... :open_mouth: This looks so different from what I did.

Thanks, @shazzbaa! Your edit to my drawing is amazing. I think I'm starting to get how important it is to put "life" into your backgrounds, just as you would a character. I really apppricate your help!

How did you draw out such even perspective lines?

(Note to Self: I totally underestimated this whole "Imma make a webcomic" thing. :sweat_smile::no_mouth:)

EDIT: You made some really points about paying attention to minor details/adding imperfections, replacing symbolism, and putting some braintime into structures. I'm going to take all of that into consideration from now on!

Clip Studio Paint perspective rulers.

Thank me later.

A looot better! The roof tiles are very distinct and you have much more attention to detail now. I want to say the perspective of the house on the very bottom right (the one that's clipped off the page) is a little off. Seems like it's front facing the viewer when it should be titled to the side slightly. Actually scratch that - not sure it should be there at all based on where the street is running down. Unless it's the end of the street or something. :0

Don't feel too pressured to cram lots of detail in by the way. It's up to you but you could space the street lights/ wires for example a bit more (text boxes are part of page composition so a heavily detailed image may distract from or make an image feel crammed with heavy text present.) As long as you just have subtle things breaking up basic geometric shapes like creative windows, a couple interesting plants and say some street detail or something, you're good to go. How much or how little you want to put in is just dependent on your style. Just keep an eye out for your bg trying to steal the spotlight from text.

Really though the difference between this and your first image is night and day, excellent job. :+1:

Thank you :blush:

EDIT: Yeah, that corner rooftop looks the same (position wise). No problem though; I corrected it.