Ahhhhh, Backgrounds. The bane of any artist, right? xD Not really! Backgrounds are just as important as the characters in the pic! So you want them to look nice, right?
Back when I was kid (about 25 years ago D:), my dad gave me one very important piece of advice that I still hold to and take to heart to this very day. He said “Start with the background first.”
This will either make your life so much easier or it can even make it worse :D You decide! For me, it’s very helpful. Backgrounds usually tend to be difficult to do. Not so much that they are hard to draw, but that they take a long time to draw. If you can get them done and out of the way first, everything else will be easy.
So when I do a background, I always start out just doing a rough sketch. It’s messy, sketchy, not perfect at all—which is very important! Don’t focus on making it perfect right away. Doodle it out, see if it works with the rest of the scene. You may even have to change the background view to match or suit what the characters are doing, so don’t worry about making it nice and clean right away.
Once you know more or less where stuff goes, clean it up! Refine it, ink it, color it too! And let the rest follow suit.
Another important thing, that every artist should know and not be ashamed of, is to use references. It’s okay! Really. This pic here, I used references of a In-N-Out in Inglewood, CA (right from Google Maps!). Also, you might notice the 3D car models. Those were provided by my good buddy(and commissioner of the pic) Zanji! He modeled them from the ground up—which he used references for too–and wanted me to use them as references for this piece.
As for brush settings, there’s not one brush I use in particular. I’ll use a variety of them, depending on what I need. Most of the time, I just use the “Pencil” brush (as it’s called on Sai) for sharp and constant lines/outlines. Will use it for laying down flat colors too. For lighting and shading, most of it is done with the marker brush (but will use the pencil too, if I want fine or bright highlights).
I hope this little bit of info helps! I’m sorry it’s not much, but I hope it will help or give you some ideas of how you can do backgrounds. I got some other background examples to show that I will upload in another post right after this one!
Main thing is not to panic. Don’t get discouraged. Just take your time and don’t worry if it doesn’t come out right the first time! Just keep at it until you get what you want!
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