Making a background

In this tutorial I want to show how I did the background in my painting "Elenquilde". This is not the only way to paint a background, it all depends on the subject, and what kind of background you want. I painted it in Adobe photoshop 7, with a tablet. This tutorial is not directed to beginners at computer painting , it requires basic knowledge about brushes and their setting.

Step 1

In my case I wanted to draw a portrait of a character of mine, Elenquilde. Since she is a darkelf I wanted the mood of the painting to be kind of dark, but I wanted a day scene. I looked through my stack of reference photos, and found one that my father took when he was hiking in the mountains in Italy. I liked it because it had an overcast sky, and it was a vast space, and gave a lonely feeling, wich I feelt was suitable for the character.

Step 2

When I had decided what sort of mood I was going for I started laying out my background, looking at my reference while doing so. I just started by blocking in fields of color, using a round hardedged brush, set at medium opacity. The brush was pretty big at this stage, as I wanted to define form and color rather than details. I didn't follow the photo exactly, I wanted the background to fit my canvas. I also changed some of the colors. The clouds became greyer, and I made everything less saturated, to get the feeling I wanted.

Step 3

I started to work from the back, and that means that I had to do the sky first. I alredy had a base to work from, so I started to work in some detail with a smaller brush. When everything in the sky looked more refined I noticed that my clouds were to sharp, so I went over everything with a soft edged bruch, on low opacity. I worked zoomed in, as I do in this stage, and I had a small brush, to prevent everything from getting to fussy. When I blend colors I pick a color near the edge of the two colors I want to blend and paint it over the edge with a low opacity brush. I then pick the other color and paint it over the edge. Then I pick the more blended color I have gotten with the first step and use it when painting over the edge. This gives a smother edge with every layer of paint I do.

Step 4

After finishing the sky I painted the element next to furthest away, the mountain. I started by defining it some. I didn't want a smooth, plastic look, that digital works often get, so I tried to work with many colors in each element. To make the mountain look like it is in the distance I used light, non saturated colors furthest away, then darker more saturated colors the closer to us it gets. I used a smaller brush than I used in the first layer of paint I laid down, and I used a opacity at 40% - 50%.

When having put the basic colors down I had to refine the whole mountain. I did so by scribbling back and forth, using a lighter color over dark places, and dark colors over light ones. I didn't want anything to have a blurry edge, and there shouldn't be any large areas with only one color. I used a really small hard edged brush when doing this, and an opacity that made every line distinct, but not to distinct. The scribbling I did by just moving the pan back and forth, and around a bit. You just play around with it until you find a texture you like. If you do it on a new layer you can just discard that layer if you don't like the way it looks, and then start over.

Step 5

As I am working from the back to the front it is now time for the hill in the middleground. I decided to start with the left side, and work to the right, and dhen downwards. I worked zoomed in, and had the reference photo awalible. I try to put detail in, to make the hill look textured. zoomed in it jus looks like scribbles but when I zoom out to viewing size it looks like a highly textured hill seen from a distance. The texturing is the important part that prevents your work from looking flat and plastic. Off course different objects have different textures, and that is also important whan painting. The rocky part has more chunky scribbles, while the grass has to be made smother. This part of the background has to be more detailed than the mountain, as it is closer to us. As with the mountain you may want to play around, and try different ways of scribbling, to find what looks best. Choose different colors to scribble over areas, to get a good depth and a realistic colors. It looks best when you first scribble a darker color over an area and then loosely scribbles the base color over the darker scribbles again, to not make them to prominent.

After finishing the part of the hill furthest away from us I had a cliff to paint. As it is closer to us I will have to detail it a bit more, and it can't be to smooth.

This is how it will look zoomed in, you can se evey scribble, and it doesn't look that good, but as soon as you zoom out it all looks good.

Step 6

Now it is time for the middle- and forground. It is a grassy hill, whare the grass is mostly brownish and dead looking. First, as in the previous steps, I laid a base of color. This time I used a textured brush, to give it a more earthy, random look. As I have said before, it is all about textures. As I laid out the basic texture I made sure that I put dark colors next to light colors, and the opposite, but I tried to not make it look to organazied. When I had the basic texture down, I went at it with a smudge tool, at a high pressure. The smudge is most times not good to use, as it often gives a blurry feeling, but this time it is good, and helps me to build a good texture fast. When I had that texture I began to paint in some greener tufts off grass, and some reddish ones, I also put some stones in the grass.

This is the look zoomed out.

Here is how it looks when I am working with it.

After making that I had to break up the texture, and make it look more random. To do this I Painted straws of grass freehand. I made them light, and worked with three different sizes of brushes. I tried to draw the stands leaning different ways, some broken, and so forth, just to make it feel like it was done by nature, not an organized artist.

Step 7

Now I take a step back, and try to look at the whole picture. How does the pieces fit together, and does anything need more refinement?

I felt that The sky was a bit to blurry, I went in with a small, soft edged brush to refine it som more.

I also felt that the green hill and the nearest one were to different in color, so I tried to put some of the yellow in the farthest hill, and some green in the nearest one. It was really subtle, but it makes a difference.

Here is the finnished background: