How are you making your backgrounds?

[Lore-Lei]

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I plan this to be my new sig when it is complete... but no matter how hard I tried I just can't make a normal looking background to it, like, say, the Arena's banner up there. Agh, it frustrates me so much because I'm so close.

Could someone share me some tips and tricks for good-looking ground-grass for this type of pictures?

[MsMedley]

Ah, I really like your drawing so far! 

What program are you working in? Generally I would suggest looking for some free background images like a field and placing it in the background. There are some filters you could use to make a photo look more like a drawing (although I'm only familiar with Photoshops filters). Maybe you could find some free brushes online that have a grass pattern?

Hope that helps a bit!

[Lore-Lei]

Thank you. I'm using Krita at the moment. I'd rather make everything myself, especially the Dream Castle in the background.

[Pheasant]

It looks great so far! I prefer to paint mine in Krita as well.

- Study landscapes - either in person or from photographs - when you can.
- Squinting your eyes will blur the details and help you to focus on the shapes / shading / highlights.
- Be patient and draw often. Your backgrounds will improve over time.
- Lay down your darkest colors first, and build up the highlights.
- Press your F3 button to adjust your opacity and flow as you draw. Mine are usually at 0.75% and 0.30% respectively.

If you go to your Brush Settings > Predefined, you can select a variety of brush tips that are perfect for landscapes. The following background was painted mostly with texture brushes, with the grass 'stamp' brush used in the lower right.
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I hope that helps you a bit; if you have any questions please ask. Good luck!

[Lore-Lei]

Your drawing is so stunning....

Yes, it does. Thank you very much.

[Pheasant]

Thank you.

Here are two more tips I forgot to mention:

- Some Krita brushes won't create solid lines when shrunk to a smaller size (5.00 px, for example.) To fix this, go into your Brush Settings and change the spacing to 0.

- Most digital artists work on a canvas twice as large as they need. When the art is complete, they shrink it to a smaller size. This blurs details and gives a smoother look.

[Griffin]

How's it going?

I'm not much of a digital artist and backgrounds are definitely not my forte either. But as with any painting, digital or traditional, my advice is to start by blocking colours - lay down the basic colours and shapes and start building from there. One thing to keep in mind is that all colours turn to purple/blue when viewed from a distance. Therefore an easy way to give your backgrounds some depth and a more realistic look is to make grass blue-green in the horizon and bright green with pale or even yellow highlights in the foreground. The second thing that comes to mind is to keep details to a minimum. If you look at the Arena banner, for example, you can only see individual blades of grass in the front where Lady Arena is, and a hint of detail beside the path. I think the same concept works well even if you're doing a painting instead of a pixel piece. I'm not familiar with Krita but I know there are some grass brushes available for Photoshop and Gimp that will reduce the working time. But of course it's possible to just do individual strokes, and with a smallish painting like a signature image it doesn't really matter. Like Sundown said, in any case it's best to work with a larger canvas and shrink the finished picture as needed. Good luck! 

[Lore-Lei]

I did a thing! I found a couple 'stamps' and brushes in Krita. Apparently, there's an entire set of different things hidden in the brush editor I've never knew about.
[img width= height=]http://img14.deviantart.net/6300/i/2016/089/c/6/what_s_this____easter_birthday_gift_for_tina_by_the_syreth_clan-d9x1ehw.png[/img]

[Griffin]

Oooh very nice, the grass and trees look amazing! Isn't it fun to find new and useful tools & tricks in your drawing programmes?

[Lore-Lei]

Oh it sure is. Albeit it has that subtle 'I'm so stupid!' taste to it as well. Thank you very much. I must admit though that I actually stole that grass technique from the cover of the book I read beforehand.