How would you draw a background like this?

[akitsukino]

I once heard that the most important thing to consider when designing something off of a reference is deciding what to keep and what to leave out. This is definitely something I struggle with as it can be quite difficult looking at an image and deciding what's necessary and what's not. I think I look at things too literally; when it come to drawing perspective I can usually just find where all the lines converge, but when it comes to images like this I usually have trouble deciding what steps to take. Breaking things down into foreground, mid ground, and background helps a bit but deciding how to interpret all those details- in this case trees- gets a bit to complicated. I never know what details to keep and which ones to ignore. If anyone has any tips on how I can make this easier to understand I'd appreciate it.

Here's the picture I'm referencing.

And here's the picture I want to use it for.

[Shanny8]

The art in the foreground will have a lot more detail in it than the art in the background- just like when you look at the picture with your eyes, the details start to become obscure the further the scenery gets out of range. Also, when coloring, the images in the foreground will have a little more sharpness to the color than the images in the background(notice how the mountain range farther away has a faded looking gray/blue wash over it).

[thomassayle]

First, have a squint, what you can see through the blurriness its whats important, what is needed to get the idea across.
The only perspective I would keep would be the foreground, the rest is flat enough.
Everything in the scene has a limited palette. the forest mid ground trees are dark green and bluey white snow, theres so many of them, adding huge amounts of detail would crowded it and confuse the reader. Do simple trees and then put snow in the right places where it would land on the tree.

The background mountains Would be a line for me with some colouring to hint that there is trees and snow. On the closer mount I would have a less sharp line and more squiggle to indicate that the mountains edge is made of trees, have a few line s within the mountain.

The foreground trees due to where the light is coming from would be in silhouette so not much detail there.

Well thats a cheap way of how I'd do it, kinda hard to picture how this background would fit into your drawing though.

[agentfink]

I often look at how other artists go about similar backgrounds.

A good one I immediately thought of was Sheltered, it takes place in a snowy dense wooded area.

(this is a great page I think)

You're thinking ahead about what to leave out etc, which is great. I like to think of it as how much detail do I need to indicate/imply the background.

I tried to look for samples that might prove helpful. (the last image esp has 3 elements of background with varying levels of detail).

[BraniAndNess]

This is entirely dependent on your art style. For example my style is very simplified so I would remove a TON of details.
But your art style may allow to keep a bit more. I suggest to start with big shapes and work your work towards more detail. When it looks good to you, stop adding details.
For example if you start drawing a cluster of trees, there may be 15 trees in the picture but maybe you only need to draw 5 to fill up the space. In a photographs, there are details everywhere, lines and textures on every surface, but in a drawing that would be too busy. A good place to start is not put in any textures (leaves, wood, snow, etc) then add some very sparingly (a few leaves instead of all of them, for instance). This is called partial texturing. If you're drawing a brick wall, you don't need to draw every brick. A few lines, a couple bricks here and there, and you are suggesting the brick texture well enough so that people understand.

That's the essence of simplifying a reference: how little can you draw that will still convey the feel of the photo?

[EdenStar]

Just going to put this out there, but the way you've blocked the panel would preclude needing 98% of the detail in the reference image. Are you planning to pan out and show a lot more? Because if not then its uncalled for.

Another thing, the tree you currently have in the scene isn't a pine nor does it look like most of the tree's that I'm aware of as being able to live in cold climates. I'd just put on some Bob Ross and add a couple pines and call it a day.

I might be misreading the scene though if those mounds are meant to represent distant hills rather than nearby mounds covered in or made of snow. The shot distance makes it seem like everything is immediate area information. Just my two cents on the point. Wouldn't hurt to put notes in so its easier for others to understand whats going on, I'm not even sure if that's a snow cave, ice cave, or stone cave at the moment.

Good job with the people though. There's nothing wrong with what you have currently planned, its just a good idea to clarify things as much as possible when asking an outsider for input.