Another forest BG...

[Haddas]

I was inspired by all the forest backgrounds that have been in the critics lounge lately, and thought I'd have a go myself. I have no Idea how to color this, and that's what I'm here to ask help for. Any comments you might spare on the ground and/or the clouds are greatly appreciated too.



2x

[.]

Hmmm it looks more like a field then a forest maybe some more trees???

[Haddas]

Oh, I forgot to say that. It's a forest (to the left) that opens into a field (center to right part)

[stuh505]

The root formations on the left most trees look oddly exposed, as if they were ripped out vertically.  The rightmost tree's foliage pattern looks like it's falling down through the branches.  Other than this, it looks pretty good.  However, it seems like you've put a lot more detail into this sketch than necessary...considering that the scanned pencil sketch is really just a guide for how to paint it, there's a lot of detail that will be lost...unless you're planning on just drawing in blocks of color and using a Multiply layer in Photoshop to have all the details transferred to that.

[Sonny Bonds]

Coloring it is simple, you just make a new layer in photoshop, ( Soft-color) and then draw with the paintbrush over the trees/roads/sky or whatever and voila, you have a colored image.



BTW, I did this in 5 minutes and rushed it a bit so it may seem a bit amateuristic, Ã, (I even forgot to color the clouds!) but this is just to show the possibilities with only a layer! I'm sure that if you take the time for it, the colors will be as beautifull as your drawings are.

Good work on the background!

[Reptile]

You could use it as a template and colour the details over that using layers. Thats what I do, and my bg's turn out great. :p

[Haddas]

Ok, so I edited the outlines a bit, and then coloured it using layers, as suggested, between the outlines and the background color.

[Fizzii]

Looks nice My main crit would be that the tree foliage looks like round blobs at the moment - maybe you could show more branching rather than having a trunk and leaves piled all on top of it. Having some gaps in the foliage to show a bit of sky or whatever will also make it more convincing.

With the colouring, it could do with some highlights overall; more contrast between brights and darks to make it more dramatic. At the moment the green is a bit dark overall - adding bright shades and hues of green could fix it. It would be nice to see different greens used for the trees compared to the grass too. It's good for a first attempt though

[Haddas]

I did some change in contrast values and fixed some more details, even tried adding a little highlight. Although I couldn't get the holes in the foliage to look natural, so I kinda dropped that for now.

[Fizzii]

The grass is better - it's easier to tell it apart from the trees now... just now it needs to be less 'green' - maybe add some yellow greens as well?

Anyway, with the trees - holes can help if it is sparsely leafed, but I think you may have to start over with the foliage, because the overall shape of the leaves is rather round (and most trees aren't quite as uniform as that). It will help to define the branching, because then it helps you to know how the leaves will sit on the tree.



Ok, I found this pic on Google, and annotated it. The holes in the tree show the branching. Some of the branches come out of the screen towards the viewer, and so the foliage coming off those branches will be facing us. Other branches are headed more vertically up, so we see less of the foliage coming off them. And for the branches pointing away, you won't tend to see the foliage, though you might see the underside of it through the 'holes' of the tree. You sort of have to think about the tree as a three dimensional shape when drawing it. The bunches of leaves will cast shadows on the inner parts of the tree, so you will get areas that are darker underneath the groups of leaves. Note that areas in shadows will be less saturated than those in full light.

As for details, don't worry about it until the light, shadows and colour are alright, because that's what makes the picture work