#foregrounds

And check out the ground the witchy alligators were standing on! These were days before I took advantage of selection tools that could’ve helped with shading sections more precisely. You could kind of tell that I drew the creatures first before laying down the background area. 

A better approach to this would have been to have more space and less globs of color in the lower, “reality” part of the picture with the one girl excitedly describing her zany idea. Empty background spaces allow for breathing room and add contrast to the more “noisy” parts of the picture. 

Also, let’s not talk about the color choice of my barely-legible signature during these dark times. Also influenced by the background noisiness. I might just redraw this in the future... ;) 

On the bright side, I did some better work on background-foreground balance on this picture (drawn about a month prior to the above):

I was still pretty glaze-brush-happy, but the blurriness of the train in motion made more sense and the subject popped more clearly. Still had that weird signature/placement though. 

Having less detail on the flooring also drew attention to the legs! The moving train could’ve done without the extra lines though. The blurriness should have been enough to show it in motion. 

Speaking of lines, these days I kind of flip-flop with whether or not I want my backgrounds to have some sort of line-art to them or not, and how I shade the background vs. how I shade foreground objects.

Backgrounds and foregrounds should compliment each other. While it definitely helps to have some difference in technique so that the foreground pops more, I’m not too fond of having them be so different that the foreground looks like a cut-out slapped onto the picture. But, whoo boy, did I experiment quite a bit before realizing that!

So over the years of pulling my hair out while figuring out a set style and how to showcase it in both the foreground and background, here’s some stuff I’ve gravitated towards.

Background lines are less distinct and maybe more muted than foreground lines.

Alternatively, don’t put lines in the background art at all.

Simpler details, textures, and shading than what’s in the foreground

Some negative space is your friend

A nice overlay can soften harsh contrasts between background and foreground color-schemes.

Block out background stuff before drawing the foreground stuff! This makes for easier scaling and less of a headache!

Also check out one of my latest digital doodles for some cathartic progress and eyebleach(?) Apologies to those who don’t like insects that much. 0w0

This time, I didn’t go reckless/ham with the glaze brush. Subtle background choices make the mango and fly pop while indicating light direction. The mango, being the bigger/fruity piece still gets texture/shading done to it. But I decided to focus my line art efforts on the fly to distinguish it as the main “character” of this piece.