hi bendix! any tips for drawing/ lighting backgrounds? yours are so gorgeous and cohesive, is there anything specific you think about when planning the layout and props?
Thank you for the question! I'll do my best to answer it, but if something doesn't make sense, feel free to hit me up with some follow-up questions, because sometimes I just end up rambling, hah!
There's a couple of things I keep in mind when I do my bigger illustrations. I always want certain things or characters to be in focus, so for my cowboy illustration, I wanted the four characters from my comic to be the main focus of the piece. I used a couple of different techniques to emphasize this, whereas one of them is lighting.
The background is overall a lot darker and has more contrast between dark and light, than the foreground. To further separate the group from the background, I used the window in the back to add a rim light (that honestly makes no physical sense but it looks neat so...), to make them feel more cohesive as a group.
The second thing is balancing the amount of details I put into it. While there is a lot of stuff, the background has broader, bigger and clunkier shapes than the group in the foreground does.
To keep the feel of the details to a minimum, I kept them within those shapes, so the paintings still feel like single boxes, with stuff in it.
This helps the foreground pop with all the smaller details I've added there.
The next thing is colour. The overall colour scheme is very reddish and brown, but to connect the four characters in the foreground, I added blue to them.
Kain, Christie and Dakon all wear bits of the blue and Raki is holding playing cards with the same blue, while his entire outfit is tinted blue-ish, so even if it's black, the cold tones match with the blues.
This also puts them in contrast to the background characters that are exclusively red/brown and stays within those colour groups.
The details on the table are only 3-4 colours as well; I like to keep my palette to a minimum so the things I want to stick out, actually stick out, and so it doesn't get too busy.
The final thing I like to do, is direct the gaze of the viewer, and use contrast in shape and gestures.
The background and the background characters has very straight lines ...
... whereas the foreground characters are more curved by leaning towards each other, and by sitting around a small round table, that forces them closer to each other as well.
To further direct the gaze of the viewer, I use the eye-lines of the characters. We tend to follow eye-lines in pictures, so I always make sure that my background characters (or some of them) are looking at the thing I want to show off, and that the main characters especially are doing the same thing.
When all is said and done, whenever I start a new illustration, I can basically picture it in my head because I have hyperphantasia. When I sit down to draw, I nudge things around until the idea fits as an illustration, so don't be afraid to just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Winging it will take you far, hahah!
I hope this was somewhat helpful :)
