First Landscape/Environment - Tips?

[AlanTheRobot]

I've been wanting to get into doing environments since forever but every time I sat down to draw I just couldn't imagine much. I tried switching from digital to traditional and I managed to produce something.

I was trying for a prison like building far away from a city. If you guys think it's okay and it's going somewhere I'll try to paint it, although I'm not sure about the color scheme. I was thinking blue/green with some brown thrown in around the bridges and doors. If it's not okay (too many things to fix), any advice as to what I need to improve would be helpful. I've been watching FZDSchool's videos and trying to learn from those but direct critique will help me understand what I'm doing wrong.

[DAMJAN]

Your perspective is everywhere. When you look at the drawing and the left side's perspective starts off somewhere where that distant town is which is fine and its on horizon but then the right side it starts somewhere above the horizon? Also, building looks as if its about to fall because the parallel lines are not going straight. You also need foreground elements and of course work on a better composi

[AlanTheRobot]

I did it without a ruler on a very small piece of paper. The vanishing points are further out, not at the city (the road coming from it might give the wrong impression). The horizon was a bit sloppy. I'll resketch it properly in photoshop. After looking at it for a while, should I have made the prison smaller? It looks huge for me now... By foreground elements, do you mean I should have put more building and stuff in front of the prison? What about the background, should there be more stuff, mountains?

[Aether Technician]

There are a lot of ways to approach environments. personally, I prefer to start with blobs of color and refine it into something coherent. That way, you get the overall feeling and composition down first, and you don't have to worry about laying in color later. That method can also help generate ideas. Experiment a bit and see what works best for what you're trying to do.

and yah, you're perspective could use some work- you should move your vanishing points much further away from each other. That and composition is what's killing the piece.

[AlanTheRobot]

Redid it from scratch digitally. I don't think I moved the perspective points far enough away.... but the perspective is right. I wasn't quite sure what to do with the left part so I just threw a sun in. The city wasn't working. I'm not quite sure the giant wall works either, but it looked worse without it in my opinion.



I'm going to move on to another piece. The concept is a bit boring with this one, but at least I had had a concept unlike the previous times where I've sat down and stared at a blank canvas for 30 minutes. I'm still new and the size and complexity of the forum is a bit daunting. Is there some sort of forum for prompts? That would be really helpful.

[DAMJAN]

Here is a quick example of what you can do to make it interesting. It's not the greatest example but it was quick and it gets the point across.

[AlanTheRobot]

Oh, wow, yeah, that works much better. I see what you mean by foreground elements. Maybe they could be another set of watch towers or something. Thanks. I won't go any further with this piece, but I'll keep everything in mind for the next attempt.

[DAMJAN]

Good luck.