Okay, I'm trying to draw Olympus and it's not going well. 
I have the start of it but it looks wonky and I'm trying to learn concept art for enviornments but I horrifyingly underestimated my architecture skills and concept art skills. Do ya'll have any resources or tips on how to make envionrments look less like this?
Sep '24
Sep '24
Trying to get the concept down. I think I might've used too many rulers. I'm going to watch more youtube videos omg
honestly as someone who also struggles with environments, my biggest tip is to just reference a specific image rather than spit something out of thin air. My biggest struggle has been proportioning things and also keeping everything at a same/similar plane, so just copying what I can from a real life photo has helped me immensely (and is also less brain work for me lol)
Generally speaking, Olympus in comics and other media tends to just be the Acropolis in Athens except bigger.
It's a very complicated structure and photo ref and any perspective tools you have is a must.
Thing is, old oil paintings tended to portray Olympus as how we tend to portray the Christian idea of Heaven: Lots of muscle men sitting on clouds. A lot of Greek religious imagery became early Christian imagery. And then a lot of Christian Rome's interpretations of Greek imagery became the Renaissance's interpretation of the place. It's not far fetched if you want to go that route.
Worse comes to worse, just imply it like Lore Olympus did.
Thank you! I might have to practice some concept art. I did find an old asset I bought off Acon 3d so I might be using that instead because if I focus so much on the enviornment my comic will never get done 
I think you were on the right track with the first picture. Maybe focus less on the lined sketches, because sometimes seeing so many lines can make things feel overwhelming. For example, when I'm doing a drawing with multiple characters I'll pick a more painterly brush and block in shapes, because that helps me figure out positioning better. I'll also use grayscale tones to figure out shading and lighting. Then I do a rough lined sketch on top and it makes things easier to work out because I'm not working with small details, just big shapes and then working down to smaller stuff. Kinda like this:
I just wish i could figure out how to paint correctly. When I do it it just looks all blobby and gross :[ I followed some youtube tutorials and maybe I'm just not rendering it right ://
Try doing it in grayscale so you can focus more on getting the right shapes and tones for the lighting instead of the right colors. You can color it after with layers or just do linework over your painted sketch and then color that. Color can make things confusing. it's why I rarely paint with color unless I have a set palette, lol.
Okay, I made a very quick and very messy and unfinished sample of what I mean.
So yeah, just grayscale messy sketching and then you can do a cleaner lined sketch over it!
Edit: If you wanna see an anime style greek background done well check out Saint Seiya. There's some newer series, but the OG had some beautiful backgrounds.
This is similar to vapidink's suggestion.
Try "blocking" shapes first -- foreground (closer), background (farther) and midground (inbetween). You can clean up and add details later.
Draw some smaller stuff too -- like trees, rocks and objects. You can figure out these smaller things separately before working on the bigger background. It is less daunting to start.
EtheringtonBrothers also has a lot of good drawing resources: https://www.deviantart.com/etheringtonbrothers
I have a tip.
First step is to collect 10 reference pictures of what you want to draw and make a reference/mood board.
Next step is to think about what big elements you want in the Olympus that you want to draw.
Stairs, one main building, 5 smaller one, 3 kind of gates (I don´t know what it´s all called, just
making things up), hills in the background etc.
Then draw a rough plan (like an architect blueprint thingy) and then draw a rough sketch without thinking about perspective,
just throw the elements on the canvas
Then you can think about things like ground level, horizon line, perspective and grids and work on the rough sketch that
you made in step 3.
The biggest mistake (imo) that you can do is to draw with perspective grids before you know where the journey is going.
It will end up in a stiff drawing and I don´t think the result will be good. There is a principle called "work from big to small"
and this is very important for drawing backgrounds.
I learned step 3 from an experienced german comic artist some years ago who gave me feedback on my super stiff backgrounds.
It is so much easier when you first throw everything on the canvas and then start working on it.
Bonus tip that I often do after step 3 when I work on buildings. I construct everything in a 3d architecture app and make
my own 3d models of the buildings. I would do a super rough one for olympus. It´s sometimes easier to work like that instead
of drawing everything from scratch with guidelines
