I'll be going over my top digital background tips that drastically improve my art if you
spend too much time stressing or fussing over your backgrounds these tips can help you simplify and
speed up your process again these are the tips that helped me but there's always the possibility
that it won't help you the same way but you can draw however you want if you have your own tips
that helped you with your backgrounds feel free to share as a comment down below don't let your
background overtake the character if it's not the focus that's the number one thing that I see all
the time is that people where like they'll draw in the background and it'll be like crazy busy
super super filled with a bajillion things but it's not the focus and that it takes away from
the character that you're drawing three strats that I usually use are to use less detail overall
just forfeit the detail sometimes it's better just not to add in enough detail at all blur
it if you draw in something blur the background so it fades away from the character or have no
background at all just don't put in a background if you don't want it to overtake a character if
you have you know there's a character in front if you don't want it to be the main main focus
of what the composition is then either use less detail or blur it if it's not the main focus of
anything you really don't have to make it super super detailed try this experiment with me choose
something in your current environment and focus on it do you see the background around it in
full detail no it's out of focus our eyes could only focus on one thing at a time so if you make
everything highly detailed in an artwork it will lack focus and realism as well this background
in a good chunk of these pages they're blurred there's no detail on them you can tell that it's
a background you can tell the setting you can see what's happening but it's not the forefront
it shouldn't be the forefront because it's going to take away from the characters if you you know
the background is way too detailed way too in there so you gotta make sure that you have your
background not take over the main character focus if the background is meant to be in focus then you
can have it have detail let's say that you do want the background to be in focus right with
this one so the background isn't super out of focus it's not super in focus but it doesn't
take away from the main character in the front your eyes should lead to the main point of focus
first but at that point if the background is part of the illustration you want the people to pay
attention to it then you should add more detail to it after that if say you have an establishing
shot you have a full background where you want like everything to be like super super
focused on right you can use line art for your background in this example I use accommodation
line art in the buildings in the foreground and no lines with a blur in the background to help
achieve depth if you don't then don't don't use any line art for your backgrounds have it fade
into the background just use colors only and it'll fade nice and easily away and not take
away from your character use less detail blur it or no background at all depth is done with your
foreground middleground and background I just taught this let me pull out the lesson this is
from my art mentorship class your background your mid ground and your foreground are the
three planes that you usually have on any kind of background if you want to learn more about
composition I'll add a link to our video all about that which you can watch about next but if
you would like to add depth say if you have like something coming closer to you something that's a
little bit farther away if you have a blur you can tell that these tree leaves are directly
in the front because they're nice and blurred they're kind of covering the camera it shows a
bit of a short focal length same deal with here if you want depth with something that's coming
closer towards you you can blur it the thing that is in focus this will be nice and sharp
very easy to see but the thing that comes closer to you will be a lot blurrier but yeah you can
add depth by just blurring I didn't write any of that down because that's backgrounds in general
texture let's do this plants props that sort of thing and the light can be done with a lot less
detail than you think right a lot of people end up like especially with like bushes or like trees
they'll end up trying to draw a bunch of little leaves all the time a bunch of little grass like
bits so on so forth plants can just be a swipe of the brush it can just be like a little little tick
right chairs can be like five lines put together they don't even need to be like rendered out like
crazy right if it is not the focal point don't focus on it stay zoomed out if you're working on a
background don't zoom in constantly if you zoom in all the time it is going to make you focus in on
places that you don't need to focus on it's going to make you worry about detail that you don't need
to worry about if you like try and zoom in all the time it's gonna slow you down and it's gonna
make things way too overly detailed trees little information very very small amount of information
zoomed out you can tell it's kind of a foggy day in a forest kind of looking up at some grass
zoomed in it's like three brush strokes there's no detail here it's an illusion it's false stay
zoomed out I did this whole background with like this zoom length I didn't change anything I did
not do anything extra these leaves at the front you can tell that they're leaves you can tell that
these are grass blades it's a single line nothing different about it I didn't spend forever on it
it works just fine even with this one you can tell this is the grass there's just tiny little
ticks for grass you can tell that it's grass you can tell that he's lying in a forest you can tell
this is a bush all right there's just a little bit of texture rendering right you really don't
need that much detail for a background it's called an illusion of detail let's say if I was drawing a
bush got a bush shape going on here if you'd like to support the channel and the creation of free
arts education become a member on patreon let's say this bush is far in the background I don't
even need to worry about it but I start to render it more and more I'm like oh I need to make sure
that every little leaf is kind of showing up right as I bring more and more things into the forefront
and I started with that blob but now I want to add more things onto it it's like now I want to add on
little individual leaves and lets keep going once if I just keep on adding more and more leaves make
this texture even more dense and then I'm like oh man this doesn't look like a perfect leaf let me
zoom in more and let me try and like make every single leaf like a perfect leaf shape and then
I go in and I'm like no wait I want to like add in the texture of each leaf as well all right and
I go in and I start like doing like don't do this this is too much detail if this is the thing that
is in the background it's just too much detail if you're in a forest and you have to do a bajillion
of these guys it looks good yes it does but if you have a do a bajillion of these guys it's in
your background you're gonna take forever and it's also going to be too much texture density if you
want a nice bush that's in the background that just you won't have to worry about ever you just
draw in the general shape draw on maybe like a bit of highlight bit more highlight if you really want
to that's it that's all you need that's enough information you need nothing more you can get
the point across with less don't burn yourself out just because you're trying to be a perfectionist
what if the area is a focus and not a character then you want to do something like this then you'd
want to do something like this and I cannot help you but if the character is a focus then you can
do that but if the area is super expansive let's say if you're doing a huge background piece and
there's like a bajillion things around like it's a huge zoom out you still don't need to do this
unless if you're really zoomed in on that bush or that bush is your main focal point then like you
don't need to zoom in that much like you don't need this much detail unless if you're zoomed
in on that bush this is still fine even if your background is the focus right there's an artist
that I really really love her name is Nadia Kim she's an amazing artist she does a really really
good background art the background is the focal point there's a couple of characters here that
you see first but look at all these leaves it's a single swipe of the brush all of these in the
background it's a single swipe of the brush same with these grass these leaves are directly in the
front so they have a lot of detail right but as it goes farther back here it becomes less and less
detailed as you go farther into the background the less in your face it is the less you need to worry
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