Giisk

Based off this post by @7-inches-of-satanic-panic

honestly, backgrounds, landscapes and all that stuff is the most enjoyable part of drawing for me so i'm gonna share how i do it

if i do a photo study, i try to make the whole piece less detailed and more based on recreating the colours and shapes that would make up the general vibe i'm aiming for rather than copying everything that is visible in the photo

(or even if i'm not doing a photo study and try to draw from my imagination, it's better to operate with simple shapes and then add details gradually)

so, when it comes to planning out the whole background, i usually focus on those simple shapes and skip the sketch phase cause it actually makes it more difficult (at least for me)

SOMETIMES though, i do a sketch but only when i have something else in mind and not only the basic landscape, like adding some characters or animals or other important objects

...but more often than not i add them later cause my process of thinking when drawing is really chaotic so i usually decide to add something in the middle of creating (like here) if a random idea suddenly pops up in my mind lmao

after drawing those basic shapes i add more and more details, shadows, lighting, etc... at this point i merge all of the layers if i decided to start with a sketch; if not - i draw everything on only one layer from the very beginning (but it's just my personal preference and also a matter of habit ig)

i like to make some aspects of my backgrounds more vibrant and saturated so that they can stand out more and the whole background isn't that dull; i usually do it with clouds, lighting or smaller details, like here

also! a little tip on blending colours and drawing a basic lighting from me - if you use this more saturated colour for, let's say clouds, blend it a little with the base colour of any object you want to put lighting on. the new colour can be used like that, it's slightly less saturated and fits better

i've probably mentioned that some time ago but i play A LOT with saturation and darkness of the colours during my process of creating cause i feel like the colours i pick at the very beginning are a bit too dim and muted to my liking and making them more vibrant makes the whole piece more interesting imo

Hunter:

Wrecker:

I remember like, years ago watching this video by Keinan Lafferty (I think) on youtube, and used the 'banana method' or whatever he called it in that, which is essentially making a curved 'banana' shape on your colour picker

essentially, the idea is, using your base colour (or, mid tone), you progressively shift the colour lighter and more de-saturated for your lighter tones, and inversely shift progressively darker and more de-saturated from your mid-tone for your shadows.

You can see in my colour-picked example here that it is not a perfect semi-circle, but it was generally the basis for how I'd pick colours, and then would tweak them from there.

How I'd tweak the colours usually is with the help of overlaying gradient maps. I'd also tweak colours in especially shadows, where I'd intentionally use a slightly lighter grey for the illusion of 'cooler' tones in shadows, and darker more saturated tones along the edges where the shadow meets the light.

I've more recently started trying out using triadic colour schemes, where I pretty much jump to the opposite side of the colour wheel for my shadows and light.

This image on twitter sort of sparked my inspiration to experiment more with that (image is linked to the original post) but I am still trying to get the hang of it still 🥲