#i don't usually do tutorials but i hope you find even a fragment of this helpful or relatable | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

makenna-made-this · 7 months

Note

I love you chickens and offer two of my own. Do you have any advice on how to improve my backgrounds? I have a lot of trouble with flowers and other plants, like the purple hyacinths in the first drawings?

all your BAWKtobers are so cute I love them

!!!!!!!!!! I'm so glad you are enjoying BAWKtober! It is the highlight of my year. And my goodness, these are lovely! Your choice of colors are so nice to look at, they feel like a soft place to rest your eyes.

Honestly, backgrounds have always been something I myself struggle with, and I don't know if that makes me more or less qualified to offer advice, but I can pass on what I have found helpful for myself.

1.) Start with something you LOVE. Trying to draw something you struggle with can already flick the little task avoidant I Do Not Want To Do This switch in your brain, so we are going to stack as many positives against it as we can in an effort to get our mindset as far away from This Sucks and I'm Not Doing It zone as we can, so: Start with something you love.

Are you passionate about nature and plants? Start practicing with nature backgrounds. Fascinated by roman architecture? We're gonna get drawing those pillars. Have a bunch of OCs that live in a fantasy setting and desperately want to be able to draw them interacting with the places you've imagined in your head? Get ready to get worldbuilding. If it's a subject you are already interested in it is going to feel significantly less like pulling teeth at the start than if you are stuck doing Boring Square House In 2 Point Linear Perspective (unless you love Boring Square House in 2 Point Linear Perspective, in which case, follow your heart).

I do this a lot with my BAWKtober drawings. I love drawing chickens and want to be able to have them interact in fun environments. The Chickens Part of the drawing are easy and familiar for me. It's something my brain is comfortable with. So I use it as a bit of a mental touchstone to keep myself skirting just shy of the This Sucks edge long enough to stay motivated on the background part of it.

Find your "Chickens."

2.) SIMPLIFY! Even complicated things are just many big and small shapes. Learn to break things down into their most basic shapes and use those as the building blocks to map out your background. Everything is Shape. Think Shape.

You don't have to get hung up on finer details right now. Those can come later. I did this with the rows of wheat field in my Harvest Moon prompt. Envisioned them as large blocks laid out next to each other. I mapped out shadows by darkening the sides away from the source of light (Big Ol' Moon Circle),

And after i got that base work i built off it with details (notice how you can still picture those shapes underneath it all). While this is by no means a Complicated background, the general method works for more intricate things too.

It's also helpful when trying to map out lights and darks. I do this a lot when I am trying to get a sense of depth and shadows for an environment:

Start with the really basic shapes. I like to imagine the background, middle ground, and foreground are all on different layers stacked atop each other facing the viewer (think those cut paper shadow boxes).

GENERALLY speaking, you are gonna have things closest to you be darker and more vibrant colored, and objects in the distance will be lighter and less saturated as they fade into the atmosphere. There are of course instances where this is not the case ( a background of a dense jungle or mouth of a cave may do the reverse, getting darker and darker the deeper you go, to show the lack of light and shadows that grow the further you venture from light) but it is a good rule of thumb when starting out, especially with landscapes.

Once you have that figured out, you can start slapping down more details~

3.) REFERENCES! I know everyone and their mother says this but it's true. The human eye and memory can be so, so faulty when trying to think back on how something looks. You might THINK you know, but when you try to sit down and draw it you sit there and have a 10min existential crisis (If you don't believe me, just try to draw a bicycle completely from memory. It's miserable).

So look at real things! Pay attention to the way your fav walking path curves over the hill on your walk home. Make note of how the distant skyscrapers on the outskirt of town fade into the soft pinks of the sunset much more the the stark, towering ones right outside your window. Look at cars and bushes spaced out in your local wal mart parking lot, take pictures of the flowers in your grandmother's window box. What's the simplest shape they can be broken down to and still be recognized? You are training your eye to see things in a new way and help you get good at positioning them in 3d space. Eventually, you will get better at this and won't need to reference things as often (but you always CAN. References are your friends!)

4.) Lastly, JUST DO IT!!!

JUST DO IT OH MY GOD JUST DO IT! JUST DRAW tHE BACKGROUND. I know, i know! It sucks and it's hard and it's not as fun as drawing the characters that you love and it might look bad at first but jUST DRAW IT BAD.

In the past i've spent so much time getting in my own damn way because I somehow get it in my head that there's some hidden knowledge or information or tutorial that i am missing, and if i wait until i Learn It i will finally understand the thing and Then i can go about learning it the "right way." Which is a wonderful way of shooting yourself in the foot before you even take a step.

It's really easy to get bogged down in the mindset of "i'm not good at this right now, so i have to wait til i Get Better so i can do it right" and this is Lies. This is the devil on your shoulder talking. This is the mind killer, and it is also a paradox. You want to get better at The Thing before you Do It, but you have to Do It to get Get Better. So you just do Nothing and then you feel bad 'cause you haven't moved anywhere.

So, just start trying. Pick something you love and let that carry you through the hard parts of the learning. Try not to care so much about how it looks at first. You are learning a new language, a visual one. If you get frustrated take a step back, or try drawing something else. Keep it simple, at least at first. And if you feel discouraged, remember i recently had a 10min existential crisis when i realized i couldn't remember how to draw an egg carton, which I see and hold in my hands every single day.

TL;DR DRAW IT BAD, BUT DRAW IT!

#i am so sorry for making you read a giant block of text that may not have even helped you at all #i don't usually do tutorials but i hope you find even a fragment of this helpful or relatable #everyone has their own method that works for them #the important thing is to just let yourself start somewhere and don't give up #backgrounds my beloved and belothed #backgrounds (affectionate and derogatory)#kenna answers #Makenna Made a Questionably Helpful Tutorial #chickens #tiny fluffy dinosaurs #the BEST animals #BAWKtober #asks #long post #demonicchicken1121

8 notes · View notes