Do you have any tips specifically for improving your ability to draw backgrounds? As someone with aphantasia, it's hard for me to envision characters within their environments, so any advice would be helpful! :D
There’s some little words I can throw in for you to look into, like general composition, rule of thirds, background/foreground elements, shot angles, lighting/colour values, perspective, etc…
Ironically I also struggle with aphantasia, and I think my own approach is usually to start with planning the background’s composition before adding the character to get the more difficult part out of the way if a background is necessary to the piece!
I don’t usually do backgrounds too often myself in my own art only because I don’t push myself that often when I’m casually drawing, but when I do storyboards or standalone story beats from scratch, I do my best to apply those terms I mentioned before to the sketch.
To be a little more straightforward answer wise, my personal recommendation is to start with a sort of three part mindset and make practice of the following:
1) On any size canvas, divide it into thirds using lines. The intersections these lines make are usually your best focal points for characters or whatever you want to be the most eye catching subjects.
2) Consider not just the background, but also adding middle and foreground elements to the piece. Adding these will bring some more depth obviously!
3) Work with values! I like to start in greyscale because it’s easier to differentiate how light and dark things look separately and altogether.
Thinking of it in three parts helps me at least, not my best answer, but hopefully this will be of any help at all…!
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