do you have advice for doing scenery? you seem to be able to whip those out pretty quickly
YES actually!!! i'd be happy to try my hand at expaining how i do most of my backgrounds!!!
the BIGGEST thing that helps me do backgrounds fast is breaking things down. doing rough thumbnails always helps me in this stage, because its really about simplifying it down AS MUCH as possible whilst still retaining the base details. try working in big blocks of color - once you have colors and forms down, backgrounds become SO much less intimidating to work with. the moment you start getting caught up in individual details, backgrounds start to seem so much scarier. my best advice is to keep things very simple at first as you block out forms and ideas, THEN once you have everything in you can have fun with extra details
my backgrounds are actually deceptively complex. if you look at them from a distance, they can look really volumetric and complicated. but if you zoom in enough, it's actually just a lot of basic techniques that are applied to give the illusion of more detail than there is!!
for instance, take a look at this background from a recent artfight attack i did. looks really detailed and complicated from here..
BUT a lot of the forms are actually pretty basic - just textures and solid colors!!!! this is a tactic i use for almost every background i do, and its what helps me get them done relatively fast.
^ here's a little page from the illustrator's guidebook that kinda gets at what i'm implying here!!! even three simple colors can be used to make a cohesive looking background when applied correctly !!! i always do thumbnail sketches like this as i work on backgrounds, keeping everything simple and vague before i go in with actual details
TLDR : everyone can cook. backgrounds can look pretty intimidating, but i really recommend simplifying everything down to more basic forms and blocks of color. take things loose and vague, and keep your detail limited - or else you might get caught up detailing 10000 individual leaves or something. backgrounds are ALL just applying the fundamentals of shape, form and color. that is ALL you need to make something cohesive looking !!!! i encourage anyone interested in that to get into doing simplified studies and thumbnails as they work. practice is the absolute best way to improve!!
big scenes can feel daunting at first - but once you get the fundamentals in place, it starts feeling a whole lot easier to work with !!! above all, don't stress about it and try your best to have fun with it. once you get the hang of it, i find backgrounds super satisfying and freeing !!!
i'm obviously not an EXPERT, this is just personally my doctrine as i draw.. i hope that you can find it of help!!!! and i always welcome asks like this if people have questions about my work and the like, i'll do my best to answer them!!
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