"Halo" Scene

[Tres_Chic]

Well, I can safely say this is the first time I've ever attempted scenery like this, especially on this scale. I am making this for my husband, and the character is based on his custom action figure he's been working on. I'm going to try to make it, in his words, an "epic" battle scene, located on a random desert planet. I'm currenly trying to focus on the background first, so please, ignore the ugly Halo chump in front.

Basically, my frustration is that I am having a hard time figuring out how professionals make their backgrounds so crisp and clean. Is there an easy way to turn my blobs into crisp, almost realistic lines? Thanks for the input!

[Danilo]

Im sure that you need to work on whole scene right away, meant not only background.
For the complicate scenes like this you just close your eyes and imagine the view, and then try to project on the monitor that same view

[alex_86]

Imagination can only take you so far in terms of detail (unless you're a savant). It's good for creating more ideas, but not for narrowing things down. Generally I find you need to just start making concrete decisions consciously. Start thinking of how your "blobs" are actually going to be structured. Then make indications of rock faces to match that. The best thing to do is probably start with simple, big, flat rock faces, because they determine the composition. Then you can use the same process (of blobbing, deciding, refining) for the smaller details.

References can help you to add texture details and make those decisions I mentioned. I'm sure there must be tonnes of pictures of cool rock formations, both photos and other concept art.

good luck

Edit: Oh and as for the pros, well they already have some of those references and structures hard-wired into their brain. They can make such decisions in about the time it takes to make a single brush stroke lol. Maybe there are some tutorials out there that give tips on how to do this.

[GoldenSerpent]

Search through google for tons of reference pictures of desert environments and have them open up right next to your picture as you draw. That way you can quickly refer to them easily as you are drawing. Try using a harder brush too, rocky areas like what you are trying to draw have a lot of sharp forms and often the extreme lighting will create sharp dramatic shadows as well, and you can't really make anything look sharp when you are using a soft brush.