Drawing A Detailed Background

1. Course Intro: Oh, hey there, How's it going? I'm just about to get started on a drawing ear, but before I do, let me ask you this. Are you a beginner or intermediate artist who's looking to improve your drawing skills in the area of reading backgrounds? If you answered yes to that question, then this course is for you. My name is Kyle pen shock, and today I'll be your instructor walking you through my entire artistic process for creating a detailed background scene. In this course, I'm gonna be showing you how I go about creating a cityscape seen specifically Times Square in New York City. Now it's no question at all their backgrounds can be daunting at first, especially if you're pretty new to the subject. You might be asking yourself, where do I begin or how do I go about approaching this? Or the big question, how do I break all this down so I don't get overwhelmed if you're asking yourself those questions. No worries at all. There is easy and approachable way to go about this, which is what I'm going to show you. Video course, which I'm going to split up into five different lessons, where I break down each step of my process, starting with creating the perspective grid and also the basics of perspective as well, followed by laying in the basic forms and structures. Next comes the pencils, where we add all of the details that are going to come into play later on. Then after that, we go into inking the pencils to get the line art ready for color. And then finally, the color step, which personally is always my favorite. Now, I'm going to be drawing a lot of this seemed in the program called Autodesk sketchbook. And then we're going to take that file and move it into Photoshop where we're going add a splash of color and really bring it to life. And not only am I going to show you my entire process of going about this, but I'm going to show you that there are ways to approach it and make it more manageable and less overwhelming and fun to do as well. And then at the end of the course, I'm going to have a class project for you guys to work on as well. So be sure you stick around for the end of the fifth and final video lesson. Thank you guys again so much for choosing this course. I'm truly grateful for your support. So without further ado, let's dive right into it. 2. Lesson 1: The Basics of Perspective / Establishing the Grid: And there guys, in this first video lesson, I'm going to be discussing the basics of perspective. And then we're also going to start by laying in our perspective grid to create our background seen a Time Square in New York City. I'm going to be discussing 1.2-point and three-point perspective and just the bare basics. So that way you guys can take this knowledge and use it to create any number of different backgrounds scenes. Now, laying out your perspective grid is probably the most important step of the entire process because without doing so, it's kinda like you're just guessing. And without it, your scene is going to be full of inaccuracies and it just won't look very believable to the viewer. So let's try to do that. And let's really take our time to set up the grid that way the rest of the scene going forward can be accurate and in tune with the perspective. So without further ado, let's get right to it. All right guys, we're gonna get started here. First of all, I'll be doing these examples and I'm going to be drawing an inking the entire background scene of Times Square in order to sketch book. I really loved this program because of the easy-to-use Perspective tool, which is going to come in handy quite a lot. So first, let's do the one-point perspective example here. I'm going to take the perspective tool from the toolbar on the top of the screen. And I'm going to lay in the vanishing point somewhere near the center or in the exact center. It's kind of hard to tell. But anyway, I'm going to mark the vanishing point with an x and then draw the horizon line going through it. Then I'm going to start sketching straight lines. And you can actually turn on the magnetic snap feature when you use this tool. And that will allow the lines to snap right to the vanishing point. So you want to worry about using a separate ruler tool to draw out each individual line. Next, we're going to sketch each horizontal line going across from right to left. And this is going to form our bread. And as I was explaining in the intro, this is probably the most important step of laying out any background scene. Because if the Perspective Grid is an accurate, then you're going to run into some problems later on when you're going to add details to your scene. And things just aren't going to look right. And that's what we're trying to avoid. Then next, I'm going to lower the opacity on the grid layer and create a new layer above that Roman to start drawing out some real basic shapes here. And then next, we're going to draw some straight lines from each corner of these boxes towards the vanishing point. And this is how we create a three-dimensional objects in one-point perspective. So as you can see, it's pretty simple. Once you really nail this step down, it will make drawing more complex scenes and objects a lot more enjoyable. And it won't seem as overwhelming. Yeah, I'd just like to add a little basic shading to give these objects even more dimension. And then we're going to do an example with a sphere. And same thing, we're going to draw two lines towards the vanishing point and then draw a smaller sphere to indicate the other side of the object. All right, Now we're gonna move to 2 perspective. And the same steps apply here, except the only difference is now there's going to be two points on the horizon line instead of just one. So in the Perspective tool up top, we're going to go to 2 perspective. And I'm gonna go and set the vanishing points. And we're going to set them a little bit higher with the horizon line indicating that there's going to be a higher point of view. And as I did before, I marked both vanishing points with x's. And now I'm going to start drawing straight lines that snap directly towards the vanishing points. Are going to start with the one on the right and then go to the one on the left. And as you notice, these lines are going to cross over each other and intersect. And hence forming our grid system. When do the same thing on the plane above the horizon line as well. And there we go. Now we've got the basics of our perspective grid setup. So I'm going to lower the opacity on that layer, create a new layer above it, where I'm going to start sketching out some simple shapes and two-point perspective. So first, as you saw, I sketched the basic square and then you want to sketch lines towards e to the vanishing points. And form the 3D object. And now we're going to draw one debt is crossing over the horizon line to get a different angle on the perspective. And it really helps as well to draw the lines on the other side of the object that you wouldn't necessarily be able to see this way. You know, that you're getting all the proportions accurate enough. This is just a really good exercise to practice, especially if you're new to drawing things in perspective and you're a little unsure of what to do, It's really helpful to just draw basic shapes like this. And next we're gonna do 3 perspective. So go up to the prospective tool up top and choose three-point. And then I'm going to go and lay out the vanishing points. This time we're going to have a third vanishing point that's going to be placed a little bit higher than the other two. And now the angle we're going for here is going to be a lower angle. So the horizon line is going to be lower on the canvas. And then the third vanishing point is going to be much, much higher. And we're going to follow the same steps. Draw those straight lines to snap towards the vanishing points. First, starting with the third vanishing point up top. And then we're going to start sketching the lines towards each of the lower vanishing points on the main horizon line. This perspective example is really good if you're, for example, drawing a building and you want to get a really dynamic low angle on it. This is a really good perspective to use. Okay, Now that we've got that setup, we're going to lower the opacity on that layer and then create a new layer above it. But we're going to start sketching some objects. So always start with one plane. If you're sketching a sphere or a box. And then, as we did in the past two examples, just start sketching lines that snap towards the vanishing point to greet the 3D object. And here in this example, as I stated earlier, we place the horizon line lower on the canvas in order to get a lower angle. But if you wanted to reverse this with report perspective, you would simply move the horizon line up towards the very top of the canvas and then place the third vanishing point down much lower. That way you would get a more bird's eye view type of angle of the entire scene. All right, and there we go. There's our three examples of basic perspective, 1.2.3. And next, we're going to start sketching out the grid system for our scene up Times Square in New York City. All right, Here we go. Now we're going to lay in the grid system for our actual scene. So go up and grab the Perspective tool from the top bar and choose one-point perspective. And I've laid in the vanishing point, made sure to lock it so it doesn't move around at all. And now I'm just going about sketching these lines straight towards the vanishing point to start to form the grid. So when it comes to drawing out being detailed background scenes like the one we're about to tackle. And it does have a lot of detail in it because it's Time Square in New York City. I found what's best to practice doing is to break down each step of the whole process into more manageable pieces. Meaning you don't want to go into drawing a scene like this or any background, thinking about everything that has to go into it all at once. If you do that, you're most likely going to feel extremely overwhelmed. And you're going to not feel motivated to finish the whole thing. But an effective strategy that I figured out that is helpful and that will make it easier on you, is if you treat each step like its own separate project. So for example, practice by drawing perspective grids like this and like the ones in the previous examples. And then maybe sketch a few simple objects like we did before. And then just stop and then treat it like it's done, like it's a complete project. And if you, even if you have to take a step back and focus on doing something else for a little bit and then come back to it and start the next step and kinda have that same thought process going where, okay, the grids down. Now I'm going to focus on just laying in the basic shapes and forms that are going to make up all of the details of this scene, which is what we'll be doing next. And then do the same thing, step away from it. If you have to kinda act like it's a completed projects. And then come back to it and start the next step which will be detailing and then doing the inks and then finally the colors. So definitely go and give this a try. I think it's going to be hugely helpful. And now that we've got our grid laid in here in Lesson 2, coming up next, we're going to be sketching in all of the basic shapes and forms that are gonna make up the entirety of our Time Square, New York City, seen them. 3. Lesson 2: Simplifying Complex Forms With Simple Shapes: Hey guys. In the second video lesson, I'm going to be showing you how I take complex forums and really dive beneath the surface in order to get to the foundation. In other words, I'm going to explain how to train your mind's eye to be able to visualize, identify, and pinpoint the basic shapes and forms that make up these complex subjects. Being a beginner artists, one's myself. I remember always avoiding drawing backgrounds because I always was too overwhelmed and they just seem too daunting. So I would never even tried. But then over time more and more as I did it a lot more often, I realized that it doesn't have to be complicated. There are actually magical ways too, down the entire process into smaller pieces. That way you can tackle each smaller piece that makes up the hole. And no doubt the buildings and cars will be the most complex parts of this scene. But I'm gonna show you how I break it all down into the most basic forms so that way it can be enjoyable and fun. So with that being said, why don't we get right to it? All right guys, welcome to lesson 2, where we're going to take the grid system that we laid out in lesson 1 for our New York City Times Square scene. And we're going to start roughing in the basic shapes and forms that make up all of the subjects within this complex scene. So I'm gonna take that grid we made in lesson 1 and lower the opacity of it. Make sure the perspective horizon line is set and the vanishing point is there. Make sure it's also magnetically locked as well, so that way it doesn't fly around at all. And now I'm gonna make a new layer above the grid and call it background sketch. And first, I'm going to kind of define the horizon line a bit more on this layer. And then I'm going to lightly start roughing in the very basic forms of the buildings. Now when you really think about IT, buildings of any kind, any shape, any size, they're really just big three-dimensional boxes and rectangles. So much like we did in the beginning of lesson one. With those three examples of the different types of perspective, you'll see that they're really quite simple when you break them down into their most basic forums. Doing this, we'll kinda help alleviate the overwhelming feeling of, Oh my God, there's so much detail in this building. Where do I start? You know, you just got to break it down and think of it in the most simple terms possible, which are, like I said, 3D boxes and rectangles. And now that the basic roughs for the buildings are starting to go in, I'm also going to add the sidewalks next to the buildings. And then I'm going to start roughing in this divider here where there's going to be some potted plants on display for a, for a nice touch, of course, at some of the sidewalks going further into the distance here. And now once you have the main forms for the groups of buildings laid out, which is another thing, is a good thing to start with. Instead of drawing each individual building first, block out all of the structures into one shape. And then take that simple form and begin gradually breaking it down into the separate structures. Which is what I'm going to be doing here. Now, I'm going to start separating this single three-dimensional shape into a bunch of multiple buildings. At this stage of the process, it's okay to keep everything pretty loose and messy and rough. We shouldn't be thinking about details just yet. What we really want to be considering right now, above all, is getting everything laid out the way we want. Make sure all the proportions are correct and the perspective is accurate. And then after that, then we move into details. But it's always good to focus on this step and not jumped ahead too quickly. That's always attempting thing for any beginner artists. I know I was the same way some years back when I started to attempt backgrounds. I wasn't too competent in them back in the day. But I had to just learn this process over time and learn not to jump ahead into details too quickly. And that can be tempting to do because sometimes you just get into a drawing and you're so excited about it and you just kinda want to get to B and result, but you can't rush to quickly because then things are bound to not look accurate. And now what this scene we are drawing from a photograph. However, since this is more of a cartoony, stylized appearance, we don't have to go for exact detail from the photo. We just want to kind of simplify everything down a little bit because of the nature of the style that I'm going for here. Now, I don't do realistic type of types of digital art or painting. If I tried to attempt that with this scene, I imagine it would take much, much, much longer than this one did, because I would be going for photo realism with that. But here we're really just going for a more simplified look to the scene. And now once I have each individual building kinda carved out and molded from the initial three-dimensional shapes that we laid out at the beginning. Now I can go and start adding details to each of the individual structures. So first one I'm going to do is start adding more detail to this building here on the right side, which according to the reference photo, is a good old Disney Store. So here I have the front door placed in. And then this part to the left of the door. According to the photo, It's a lot of looks like screens of some kind. And then above the front door, I'm going to kind of lay out a portion of that area where the Disney logo sign is going to go. Also, I should note if at any point during this recording the cursor just appears to stop for a bit. Don't be alarmed, didn't freeze. That's just me kind of mentally prepping and planning for the OT Before I go into make any lines or strokes on the canvas. And with a large detailed scene like this, you know, don't feel like you have to sit at your tablet or wherever you're working on this for ten or 15 hours straight. You know, it's actually good to take breaks every so often. Especially when you've been focusing for a long time or you just feel kind of mentally fatigued because this is a lot, of course. So it is actually good to step back and take a break if you need it. And now on the sides of some of these buildings, I'm just starting to add some more of the details to the structure. Also laying in some boxes for where signs are going to be going. This one here, the long rectangular ones to the left is the Time Square sign. And I'm just going to continue doing this until we have the, until we have all of the forums late in and we're ready for details. And also take your time as well. Don't feel you need to rush through this in any way. As you can see here. I'm just keeping everything very rough and loose because the main key here is to get everything looking absolutely correct. And the way I want it before moving forward, think of this as laying the foundation. You can compare it to building a home, for example, that the most important steps are laying in the foundation. Because without a strong, sturdy foundation, then whatever is built on top is going to crumble. Not going to happen in this case, but you get the idea when we're sketching a scene of this scale, you know, the rough sketch and the grid that we laid in before. These are all parts of the foundation. So we want the foundation to look right. That way. The drawing later on, all the details that color the line art will all look good too. And feel free to erase and redraw as many times as needed until you get it looking. Absolutely right. This is also being recorded in real time as well. Some of my other Skillshare courses have probably been recorded a little too quickly, or at least the process was sped up a little bit too much. But I thought that for something this big, of course, being a lot more complex than just drawing the male figure or a dynamic pose. I felt it would be best if this was recorded in real time, not sped up or altered in any way. So that way you guys don't miss anything. Hi. If you notice this whole time, I have had the prospective tool on for the most part. I only turned it off whenever I'm sketching a part of a building like the one, like this one that has some curves involves. Usually at that point I'll turn the perspective to off. Because if it's on, then I'm only going to get straight lines going across or snapping towards the vanishing point in the distance. And that's what I love about art in a sketchbook or really any program that has a prospective tool like this. It's very easy to turn it on and off when ever you need it or not. And it really just kinda helps make the process a little more smooth and more enjoyable as well. This is all being done digitally. And it's sometimes makes me wonder, back in the day before all of these digital programs were developed and put on the market. You know, I imagine drawing a scene like this using strictly traditional mediums back in the day. Probably took a very, very long time. And I imagine there's probably still a lot of veteran artists out there who have been doing what they're doing for the last 20 plus years, who probably still to this day even draw traditionally. I definitely have a lot of respect for artists like that. But nowadays, with the industry being pure, mostly digital, it's always fun to dabble in these new programs and softwares and just explore all of the features that they have. And I'm just going along adding further details here. I'm going to start roughing in some of the windows on these buildings. Another thing I should note is this sketch is being done with just the basic pen tool. And when I'm sketching, I actually use this tool when I sketch and ink. However, what I'm just doing a sketch like this, I like to turn the opacity down either to 50 percent or lower. That way. When I'm creating multiple strokes with the brush during the sketch, it looks a little bit more sketchy and less dark. Because if i've, I was using this tool at a 100 percent opacity, the lines would look very dark and it might be a little overwhelming. So that's why I like to turn the opacity down. Also, another thing is when you're drawing windows in rows like I am here, be sure to draw all the windows sort of blocked together first as one shape. And then draw the vertical lines going down from left, right, or whichever you prefer. And then erase spaces between each to form the individual Windows. This will ensure that the tops and bottoms of all of these windows are perfectly aligned. Because as far as I know, there's no buildings in New York City or anywhere that have misaligned windows. I think that would be pretty strange for the overall design, but we're not gonna go there today. And I'm just going to continue roughing in some street signs and whatnot. And now I'm going to just start erasing some of those initial guidelines that I laid down and start really making each of these buildings individual and kinda separating them from that main three-dimensional shape that we placed in the beginning. And now over here on this building to the left, I'm going to start sketching in more windows. As I stated before, make sure you start with one solid shape. For example, here, I started with a rectangle going across. And then I went and separated this one rectangle into multiple boxes or smaller rectangles rather to form the individual windows. And then what I also did was I extended the vertical lines for each of these windows down towards the bottom of this building. So that way all of the other windows and all the rows of Windows below them can be perfectly aligned as well. As I've said, I'm working on this piece in Autodesk sketchbook. However, there are other options. If you don't happen to have sketchbook, like for example, there is Clip Studio Paint, which I've recently just started dabbling into a little bit more. And I found that that program also has a fairly simple to use Perspective tool as well. So just know if you don't have audit as sketchbook, that's perfectly fine. There are other options. And to my knowledge, I don't think Photoshop has a prospective tool like this, but if you're somebody who likes to draw mobile, there's also the iPad Pro with procreate. Again, that also has a very easy to use Perspective tool as well. And I'm just going to start roughing in some more windows. And some of these buildings off to the distance a little bit. Add another billboard sign right here on top of this building. And then here off to the left, I'm just going to start placing in some ellipses or spears on this part of the divider here, this is where these potted plants are going to be placed. And for now I'm keeping it real rough and loose. But later on when I go to do the final line art, I'm going to actually use the Ellipse tool from the top toolbar. It's two tools over to the left from the perspective tool. And this will allow you to adjust and create perfect circles or ellipses at any angle. And now I'm just erasing some of the sketchy lines that we see behind these potted plants. Sometimes I like to do that even in the rough, messy sketch stage, just because when there's a lot of guideline buildup, it can get a little bit distracting. So I like to just erase and clean that up a little bit. So that way, those sketchy lines are interfering with the structures or forms that I'm drawing in the foreground. And then there's this other small divider here towards the center, splitting this part of the road and half. So I'm just going to start roughing those out. And yes, they do kind of look like big bottles. But I think there are like a type of cone of some kind. As I was stating earlier in lesson 1, as we were laying in our perspective grid, I was explaining how to practice a mental strategy that I like to refer to as sort of breaking a long, complex process down into more manageable steps. So for example, I was saying in Lesson 1 to almost treat each step of the process like it's its own separate project. So laying in the guidelines or the perspective grid from lesson one, you know, that was a project right there. And I kind of explained that doing this will allow you to not think ahead so much to all the work that still needs to be done. And it will cut, will allow you to just focus on the present and kinda Turtle your attention towards the step that you're working on. Because the most important step, again, is laying in the perspective grid. But you also have to tell yourself, you know, it's actually quite simple. You're basically drawing a horizon line, placing a vanishing point and then drawing straight lines that go right to the vanishing point and across to create the grid symbol. And then with this step, you're taking that grid and you're starting to place the basic forms over it in perspective. And again, like I said, buildings are basically just big 3D rectangles and squares. Also very simple. Now that we've had, now that we have everything roughed in here, we're going to start drawing some of the other subjects to go with the scene. So we're going to draw in the cars and the pedestrians on the sidewalks. Now, I've created a new layer above the background sketch. Just so that way, all of the smaller objects like the cars and the people can be separated from the background. And that way if I happen to make a mistake, I can erase it without affecting anything else behind it. Much like we did with the buildings from the beginning of this video, we're going to start drawing the vehicles by first breaking them down into their most basic forms, which are rectangles, as you can see here. When drawing vehicles of any kind, it is always super-helpful to start with the basics like this. Because if you try to think about all the details too soon, like, like drawing buildings, it might seem overwhelming. But if you just take it one small step at a time and begin with the most basic form of the object. It's going to make a whole lot easier going forward. And it just like we did in lesson 1 in those first three examples with the different types of perspective. Just drawing basic shapes in perspective. So this is a good NADH back to that part of lesson 1. And right now I'm just making sure that everything is placed the way I want it. So just being super messy and rough at the moment, not worrying about details just yet. I'm just getting everything placed properly. And then to make sure that the chorus further away in the distance are lined up with this one in the front. I just one end sketched the lines a little bit further back towards the horizon line, sort of acting as guidelines to make sure everything is aligned and placed accurately. And of course, if you do happen to make a mistake and you want to undo it, There's always good old Control Z. Or if you're using a Mac Command Z to undo your previous brushstrokes. And now I just want it lower the opacity of the background sketch just a little bit more so that way it wouldn't interfere with this new layer above it. And now I'm going to start adding more details to the cars. These are two taxi's here up front. It's also good to think about the basic form of the car being broken up into three separate shapes. So first you start with the long rectangle like I did before. And then it's going to have a middle section, which is where the driver and passengers cabinet is. And then you're going to have the front part of the car and then the back. And of course, the middle section is going to be raised up higher than the front and back sections. And now I'm going to start roughing in some spheres or ellipses for the wheels. And again, we're just breaking things down into their most basic forms and structures. So always start with just a couple of circles on either side. And then pretty soon we'll worry about making them look like three-dimensional tires. And I'm just going to start erasing some of these guidelines that are in the back. Because we want everything to look pretty clean as we go forward with details. And we don't want any pesky little guidelines getting in the way. So we can go ahead and erase those and just make everything look a little more clean. And that's what I'm going to start doing here, is just splitting these shapes down the middle with some guidelines here. Just so we can establish the center point or the center line rather. That way, things can look a little bit more even on both sides when we know where the center light is. Similar to when we sketch a face, you'll really want to start with the center line. And in addition to the cars, we're also going to sketch the street lights here and any additional signs that come with them. So I'm going to use that same color red that I did for the cars and keep these on the same layer as the car sketches as well. Just because they're smaller objects and they're very thin compared to the rest of the structures. So we wanna make sure that we can see them clearly and define them in more detail later on without everything else getting in the way. And then what I'm gonna do is sketch some lines, some guidelines going across. So that way the street lights on the opposite side of the street can be enlightened with the one I just laid out here. And I'm gonna do that with each side of the street lights going into the distance. And even now, when I'm sketching a background scenes such as this, and I'm in the beginning rough stages of it. Honestly, I still do sometimes get a little overwhelmed because I think it's normal. And it's what makes us human to feel certain things, especially when we're taking on a big task. But going back to what I was saying about breaking down each step of the process in your head into smaller, manageable chunks. You know, I've done this so many times that I don't let that feeling of being overwhelmed take over. I can kind of remind myself, okay, this is one step of the process. We're not thinking ahead to the next steps just yet. We're just focusing on what's going on right here. And again, I've done it so many times that it's almost become habitual at this point. So I'll go and dive into a drawing like this or when I'm drawing any background scene for that matter. And you know, I know to start with the perspective grid and that it's a very easy step. So there shouldn't really be any overthinking involves, even though in the past I did use to overthink things a lot. If me from five-years ago tried to attempt this scene, it probably would have stopped me in my tracks pretty early on. So it just goes to show you what happens when you practice something over and over and over again. It just becomes a habitual thought process. And then I'm going to start roughing in some blocks here for the People are gonna go eventually. And usually when I'm drawing people at a distance that are in the background of some scenes such as this. You know, you don't have to make them super, super detailed. I usually like to just start off with a rectangle like ship like I've shown here. And then later on, I'll kinda just detail them a little bit more. Add the head and arms and the legs. But The, there'll be more simplified because they're further away in the distance. And that goes for any object that's further away. It's not going to be as detailed as the objects that are closest to the viewer. Later on you also, you'll also see that with the cars that are further in the distance, they're not going to be as detailed. They're going to be more simplified. Because thinking about when you're in real life looking at something that's further away, it kind of appears more simple and you kinda can't see all the detail involved. The same thing goes for when you're drawing something as well. So don't feel like you have to kill yourself over making everything super, super hyper detailed in the distance. Good to just know how to simplify things to make your life a lot easier. And then when I'm just gonna do here is add a layer between the background sketch and backgrounds sketch to with the cars, the people in the street lights. Just to kinda separate them more from the background. Because in the next lesson, when I start really adding details to everything, I'm going to actually keep the cars on their own separate layer at first until the liner is mostly wrapped up. Then I'm gonna go and combine everything into one layer. And I'm just going to just the opacity of the background layers. We can kind of bring that into more view and focus. And there we go. That's our basic layout with all the basic and simple forms drawn in. So stay tuned for the next lesson when will finally go and start adding details, building upon this sketch. 4. Lesson 3: Creating the Detailed Pencils (Part 1): Hey there guys. In this third video lesson, I'm going to be showing you my process for taking the foundational sketch that we created in lesson 2 and using those basic shapes in order to build up the details of our background scene. This is where it starts to get really fun and we can really start to be creative with all of the details and really bring this seamed together in preparation for inking the pencils in the next video lesson. So without further ado, let's dive right on into it. All right guys, now we're onto the good part details. So first one I'm going to do is create a new layer above the previous two layers we did in lessons 1 and 2 and call it background pencils. Then next, I'm going to take the other two layers and lower the opacity. But first, before I start doing anything, I'm going to go and reestablish the position of the vanishing point and then lock bet in so it doesn't move at all. And now we can start detailing everything here over the rough forms that we sketched in Lesson 2. Here I'm going to start with one of the foreground taxi cabs. And throughout this entire process, I always have the original reference image open on another screen. That way, I can constantly refer to that and make sure everything looks correct and how I want it to look. As I was stating a bit in Lesson 2, with vehicles. As I said, you can always think of them as enclosed in a basic shape. For instance, here, it's enclosed in a rectangle, and we basically just separated it into three different sections, the front, middle, and back. And doing this will make it a lot easier to later on constructed details like we're doing here. And sometime in the future I'll have to create a separate Skillshare course on just creating vehicles, especially drawing cars and other types of vehicles from different points of view and angles. And showing you how simplified that the whole process, the whole process can be where you're actually enjoying it and it doesn't seem like such a chore. So here I'm just starting with the front window of the car and the hood. And now I'm just going to start gradually blocking out the front grill section and the headlights. And we're going to add the license plate in here. And then I'm going to start constructing some of those curves that make up the sides of the car. This is also being recorded in real time because since there's so much here, there's so much subject matter and there's a lot going on in this scene. I didn't want anybody to miss anything, so I chose not to speed any parts of this up. That way. You guys can easily follow along and pause and restart whenever you need to, so you can really observe everything that's going on. And one little mental trick that I found to be very effective when drawing a big background like this, is to take the section that you're working on and zoom in on it, your tablet or computer screen or whatever you're working on. This way, you can only focus on what's going on in that space. So for example, here, I've zoomed into focus on detailing this one car. I'm not thinking about anything else going on around it or what's to come next right now, I'm only looking at this taxi you because if you if if you're looking at the entire scene and tried to draw one little section of it. Your mind might tend to wander a little bit and start looking at everything else that has to be done and the amount of work that's still left to do, you might get a little overwhelmed. But if you take one little section and zoom in on it, you're more than likely to have more fun drawing and not thinking about everything else. So just a little trick. You can try it out if you want. But I think it will do justice. And if you notice, whenever I'm drawing any lines that are horizontal or going back towards the vanishing point. I always have the Perspective tool turned on to make things a little bit easier. At this stage, even though it's the pencil sketch, I'm still keeping things relatively messy. Like for example, I haven't really tightened up the line art too much. Because next, in lesson 4, when I go to the inking, I don't really need it. Well, personally, I don't really need the pencil sketch to be super tight. It can be a little bit loose and messy like this. And I'll still be able to trace over with the inking pen tool. And now I'm just constructing the side windows after doing the front windshield. And I'm going to start drawing in the little mirrors on the side as well. And with the side mirrors, if you noticed, I quickly sketched a straight line going across because you want to make sure that objects like this that are on either side of the main form are inline with one another. So you don't want one mirror to be higher than the other or lower than the other. You want them to both be perfectly aligned. And the same goes for the tires, for example, the bottoms of the wheels. I did the same thing. I sketched a line across and I made sure that the bottoms of the wheels were aligned in addition to this. And I'm still keeping things relatively loose here. I'm still erasing and redrawing certain areas until I get everything looking the way I want. And as I said before, this is still perfectly okay to do at this stage. The line art doesn't have to be super tightened up just yet. But enough to where you can actually start to define certain forms and parts of each of the sub subjects within the entire scene. Okay. Okay. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to start filling in certain areas with a darker shade of gray. And these are to indicate which sections of the car are going to be completely filled end later on when I go to ink everything. These are the parts that I'm going to fill in with Locke entirely. And then in certain areas like the front grill section, for example, a below the Toyota logo, those straight lines going across later on, I'm going to erase parts of that filled in areas. So you can actually see that there's a defined form there. And just added some slight reflective values to the front windshield as well. And now I'm going and adding the I guess you'd call it the small sign that you see on top of a lot of taxi cabs. Okay. All right. Now, I think this car is good to go. So we're going to move now to the taxi cab, but that is on the right side of this one. Also just another tip. As you saw, I just save my work when working on a big scale project like this. Be sure to save as often as you possibly can. Because, you know, it does happen and it's unfortunate when it does, when you're a programmer or computer experiences a crash. And sometimes it will have to force a shutdown and you don't have time to save your work, and then you restart and realize you lost a bunch of progress. So just, just a little thing to keep in mind to save you the trouble and the headache is to save, save, save as often as you can. You know, maybe once every five or 10 minutes, but it's up to you. We're going to go about the same steps that we went about when sketching the first taxi. So I first started with the plane for the front windshield and the front hood. And now I'm just starting to sketch a circle or an ellipse for where the tire is going to go and start blocking in the front headlights as well. And once again, I'm still referencing the original photograph that this scene is based on. So of course, this car is going to be a little bit different in the type of model that it is then the first one that we did. And I always kinda of like drawing different types of cars because there are so many variations, so many different types and makes and models. So it's always fun to draw a little bit of a variety here. And one other thing I just want to note as well, with drawing a background scene with this much detail and complexity, or really drawing any type of background. And this also applies to learning any new drawing subject is, at the beginning, you're going to feel very uncomfortable. And it's going to seem like it's too much for you to handle. But I guarantee you that if you just keep going at it over and over and over again and keep practicing and putting in the work. You know, eventually those feelings of being overwhelmed and you might have dots telling you like, Oh, you can't do this. It's too hard. And a whole other laundry list of obstacles. But eventually at a certain point, if you just keep going at it and keep persevering, of course, you're going to gain more and more confidence in yourself and your ability to tackle anything that you put your mind to. And that feeling of pressure is going to be lessened. You know, it's kinda just something that, you know, everybody moves at their own pace. And some might reset point sooner than others. But the point is you just have to know what works for you and you have to know yourself and your limits and what you can handle. There's always another level, the reach in your growth as an artist and your personal growth as well. And I've found that the more you just go at something, the easier and easier it becomes. And that's not because the task itself becomes easier. You just become stronger and more confident to be able to. Bear the weight, if you will. Okay, this car is good to go. So now we're going to shift gears and take a little bit of a break from drawing vehicles. And we're going to switch now to starting to detail some of these buildings in the background. So as I mentioned before, this one here off to the far right is the Disney Store, according to the photograph. So we're just going to start here by blocking out the main forms. And now I always like to start by drawing in the outermost contour lines first. And then once that's done, then moving to all of the inner detail lines. And if you also notice, I'm using the regular ruler tool as well, since this particular structure has some angles on it that are not as easy to lay in by just using the Perspective tool that will only allow you to draw vertical lines and horizontal lines, but for different angles such as the sides of the building here, we're going to have to use the regular ruler tool. And I always like to say, when you're drawing buildings like this, you always have to go back and think of them in their most basic form. Especially at the beginning when you're just starting to add details like this. And also tell yourself to one. They're essentially just large three-dimensional rectangles and squares and boxes. But to a lot of the details that make up the structure of these buildings are basically just a lot of straight lines. Straight lines that are going back towards the vanishing point. Straight lines that are going vertical, horizontal. And if you begin to tell yourself that, oh, you know, these are actually easy concepts that make up these complex forms. Your mind will tend to not feel so overwhelmed because otherwise, you'll, as I've stated before, you'll look at the entire thing and start maybe overthinking it and thinking like, oh, there's just so much here, where do I even start? But if you begin breaking all of these things down into the most basic concepts, you're going to have a much easier time when it comes to detailing of that ground like this. Okay, now what I'm gonna do is move to the top of this building, above the entrance way. And we're going to sketch the iconic Disney title logo. So first I started here with a rectangle to kinda box in and enclose the entire logo. And then what I'm gonna do next is basically split this shape up into a bunch of smaller individual rectangles. And I do this in order to enclose each of the letters in its own space. So that way, the perspective remains consistent with the rest of the scene. And that way the logo can maintain some some structure and organization. So that way I don't go drawing letters that are overlapping one another. Or for example, drawing one of the letters higher or lower on the plane than the others. This is a good way to again, keep the perspective consistent with the scene. And as a way to keep all of the letters perfectly in line with one another. So now I'm going to start sketching each individual letter in their own respective rectangles. And I also have the original reference image for this scene up on a different screen as well. That way I can constantly look at it and make sure everything is looking exactly how I want it to look. Now with a background seen that this detailed and complex, you should always have the original reference material available to you at all times. That way, you're not just guessing things or making assumptions or any of that. You want the scene to look pretty fairly accurate to the original image. Because I get asked sometimes if, for example, it's okay to use reference images when drawing. And I always say absolutely, you should use references as much as possible. Until you get proficient enough in a subject where you can basically draw from memory without eating a reference available. But again, in terms of a big scene like this, it is very important I think, to have the reference visible that way you can constantly be looking at it and making adjustments. If something looks off. So never feel bad about using or overusing references. You know, I think even some of the most experienced artists in the world still reference things from time to time. So it's a very helpful thing to do. And, you know, you shouldn't draw backgrounds without having some references open. Okay, Now that we've got each letter sketched out here, I'm going to start just kinda adding some dimension to each of the letters because this is a building sign. So meaning it's going to be popping out a little bit and not going to be just pressed flat against the structure. So we're just going to add a little bit of dimension to each of these. And then we can go ahead and erase those initial guidelines that we laid in earlier. Now that we've got the entire sign it sketched out, we don't need those anymore. And I'm just going to erase a little bit of the messiness some more. So that way this can be nice and cleaned up for when we move on to the inking stage later on. And I believe I've said it before, but I will probably say it plenty more times. Always be sure to save your work. Even if you have to save it. Often like every five or 10 minutes. This is good to do because with technology sometimes you never know what could happen. You know, programs unpredictable and they may end up crashing when you least expect it. And from what I've experienced before, that usually tends to be when I haven't saved my work recently. And then the program crashes for any number of reasons, and then I end up losing work and progress. So always good to save as often as you can. And now I'm just going to start adding some of the details to the building signs. So we're going to start up top above the Disney sign. And now, while referencing the photograph that we're drawing this scene from, some of the signs. Since the scene is in one-point perspective, we don't exactly get a queer straight on view of some of the smaller details such as these building signs. So the way I see it is you don't have to try and get every single detail looking exactly like the photo. For some like smaller minor details, just try your best to get an overall gist of what's going on. But don't feel bad if you can't see exactly what's happening because of the skewed or distorted image. That's perfectly fine. We just want to sort of get a general idea of what's going on. And now we're going to move on to the next building here. This one's pretty straightforward. It's just a lot of straight horizontal and vertical lines. And then of course, on the other side of the building, the lines will be snapping towards the vanishing point. And now when you're creating some of these curved lines here on this one plane of this building that is not exactly going towards the vanishing point, we're going horizontal. Just do your best to try to match the curvature of each of these sections here. Even if you have to erase and redraw the lines a few times, just to get them looking right now. In this lesson. And Napoleon, hey, within this, hello. Hi. Okay. This and character. Okay. Okay. Okay, Now that we've gone and drawn in a lot of the details of these buildings that are closest to the viewer. We're going to move now to some of the building structures that are a little bit further away. And now just a rule of thumb, when objects move further away into the distance in a scene, they don't necessarily have to be as detailed as the subjects or objects that are closest in the foreground. And doing this is kind of representative of the fact that they are much further away, the less detail that they are. Because when you think about it, when you look at any reference image of any type of detailed backgrounds such as this, you notice that the further back your eye moves into the scene, the less details you can make out. Things kinda seem a little bit out of focus or a little bit more simplified. And in your drawings, that is perfectly okay to do. Because one, it will save you the headache of thinking that you have to make everything in the background super, super detailed. Yeah, things that are closest to the viewer should have more detail like that. You buildings that we just sketched. But again, the further back you move into the scene, the more you can simplify, some of the background shrunk. Today. We're talking about the weights. All right, and now here we're going to draw in one of the traffic lights. So we're gonna do a little bit of erasing over some of those lines that we've just sketched in before. And then using the underlying guidelines that we laid in in the previous lesson, we're just going to draw some straight lines over that to represent the traffic light. And we'll be doing this a bunch more times throughout the rest of this drawing, as there are many more streetlights present. All right, Now we're gonna move to the left, the scene and start sketching in some of the details over here, starting with the sidewalk at the base of the buildings. And like we just did, we're going to sketch in another one of the traffic lights right here. And always make sure that when you are drawing any straight lines that are vertical, horizontal, or going towards the vanishing point, make sure that you have the Perspective tool turned on. And now, even if you're drawing in a different program such as Clip Studio Paint, It has very, very similar perspective tool features as Autodesk sketchbook. You know, you just have to make sure that the perspective guidelines are turned on that way, all the lines that you lay down can be perfectly straight and snap right to the vanishing point then. And right here I happen to notice that the main pole of this traffic light should be pushed back a little bit more to the left to so what I did was I just grabbed the free form selection tool and I select it the area that I wanted to move and then I just slipped it over. And now I'm just kinda filling in the gaps here. And then we're going to create another traffic signal on the other side of this poll here, just like we did. And as you notice, sometimes with curved lines, it takes me a couple of tries to get it looking the way I want. So don't feel bad for erasing and redoing lines multiple times until you get them looking just the way you want them. And now, as I create some of these lines to form the signs on this building, you'll notice that some of them are not exactly a 100 percent of horizontal. They're a little bit angled. So for that, I do end up using the standard ruler tool in order to get those lines to be nice and straight in addition to the horizontal and vertical lines that I lay in while using the Perspective tool. Okay, you guys, this was a last minute decision, but due to the length of this video, I've decided to split this one up into several parts. So stay tuned for the next video where I will continue the pencil drawing for this background. Thanks so much and I will see you in the next tutorial. 5. Lesson 3: Creating the Detailed Pencils (Part 2): All right, You guys Welcome to part 2 of lesson three, where I'm going to be continuing the detailed pencil drawing it from the previous video lesson. All right, Now I'm going to grab the prospective tool once again, and I'm going to start sketching some of the buildings that are further away into the background. And as I said before, the further away certain objects get, such as some of these more distant buildings, the less detail has to be implemented to show that they're much further away. Okay, now we're gonna go and add a few more of the traffic lights as we did with the few so far in the foreground. We're going to just add some more that go further and further into the distance. And now, when you're drawing certain object like traffic lights that are along a street or a straight path, you want to make sure that the basic shape of the structure is inline with those on either side of it. So basically, like we did with drawing the Disney side, before, you wanna make sure that all of the traffic lights here are aligned with one another. And that's why, as you notice throughout this whole process so far, I've had the original perspective grid visible below all of the sketching that we drew in the very first lesson. And that's so I can continuously have that point of reference in order to draw all of these objects and have them be perfectly aligned. So that way, you know, one isn't out of line with the others. Again, similar to that Disney sign that we sketched in before. And I'm also going to start sketching some of these background cars that are a little bit further into the distance as well. And it looks like those buildings that we just drew before. The further and further you get into the background, the less detailed things have to be. So these cars are going to be a little bit more simplified than the two that we just drew before that are in the foreground of the piece. Alright, now we're gonna shift gears a little bit here and we're going to move to a different part of the scene. We're going to start sketching in these veins, lake cones, or barrier structures that are placed next to the car. And now what I'm doing here is I'm using the helpful ellipse tool in order to draw pretty accurate oval shapes to show the tops of these cones. And I also sketched a couple of lines going towards the vanishing point in order to keep the perspective accurate and consistent as we move further into the distance. And if you notice, I'm keeping the tops of these cones. Within these guidelines that I just sketched. Again, just as a means of keeping everything perfectly aligned so nothing is sticking out too far or misplaced the wrong way or anything. All right, Now on to this third car that's closest to the viewer and the foreground here. So we're going to go about the same process as we did with those first two to the right of the piece, the two taxi cabs. So I'm starting here with the top of the car. You know, I laid out the weighing up the plane here for the front when she will decide windows. And now I'm moving to sketching in the front hood of the car. And I'm also keeping those really rough guidelines that we sketched previously to show the basic forms of the car. I'm keeping that layer visible. So that way I have an accurate base to kind of detail over and add all of these smaller forms and structures within the main form. Okay. Two hi. This character here. So we're back Here. What's this? Okay? After Effects. What's up? Okay. Hi, there. Here. Hi. Okay, Now we're gonna move to the left side of the piece and we're going to start forming some of these other buildings that appear here. Once again, keeping that respective tool turned on so that way we can get accurate straight lines that snap right to the vanishing point. And yeah, I basically, I'm just starting with the most basic structures. You know, all of the main forms, the boxes and rectangles. And I do this before going in and adding all of the smaller details and the windows. Just so that way, I don't get too overwhelmed. And really once the base shape is late in adding the details, really just all up yet, It's just very time consuming. And it can be a little tedious at times, but it's nothing that's too complex or difficult. All right, now moving from the front to the back, we're just going to perform the same steps like we just did. So we're going to start by just drawing a lot of debate structures here, what that perspective tool turned on. So that way, all the perspective can be accurate and cohesive throughout the whole piece. And on this building here, I'm just starting to lay in some of the windows. And for buildings and other structures with windows like this, as they kinda move more into the distance and their appearance becomes a little bit more skewed because of the perspective. Sometimes the windows will actually just end up looking like straight lines because of the angle that we're viewing the math. There still a fully structured windows in the shape of squares are rectangles, but because of the angle we're viewing them, that they're going to appear as to just be very thin rectangles or even straight lines. And now in this building, now that the main structures are laid in, we're going to start placing the windows. So going back to the Disney logo sign that we sketched previously, I'm going to draw one rectangle here and then basically split it up into a bunch of smaller sections. Those sections being the windows themselves. And this is a very important thing to keep in mind. So that way, the tops and bottoms of the windows can remain perfectly aligned with one another and there's no misaligned Windows present. And then we're gonna do the same thing for the next section of the building down. We're going to draw vertical lines going from the base of the windows on the very top down. That way, as well as the window's staying aligned horizontally. They can also be aligned vertically as well. And we're just going to go through this process from the top to the bottom of whatever part of this building is visible, which is only half of it here, because the other part of it is being covered by these other buildings. And now sometimes when I'm placing rows of Windows on a building that's further into the distance. Sometimes what I like to do is I like to just start by drawing a bunch of horizontal lines like this. And then what I'm gonna do is take the eraser tool here in a minute. And I'm just going to erase vertically through these horizontal lines to create the individual windows. Okay. Thanks. We hope so. Okay. Hey, everybody. And then, so in this case, so if I now draw out the famous Time Square sign up here on the left. So basically I'm just going to fill in this long rectangle with a dark shade of gray. Then take the color white. And I'm just going to draw the letters over this. And now of course, later on when I go to ink this whole thing, this sign is going to be a lot more crisp and clean looking, but I'm just roughing in the letters here. So that way I have something to trace over when I go to do the inks. And then okay. Okay, and now I'm just gonna kinda go through the entire piece and kinda just block in some of the more shaded areas with a really dark shade of gray. And these areas are going to be the areas that are going to be fully filled in and inks in the next lesson. So before that, I kind of just like to kinda lay the groundwork for that and kind of pinpoint the areas that are going to be filled in entirely with black. Okay, so now there is actually something that I noticed is a little bit off that I didn't catch before. It's the small section of the street over here where the sidewalk is. So I'm just gonna go and erase that and draw a very light line going across horizontally. So that way I can ensure that everything lines up properly before a part of that section was just a little bit too low. But no worries. We can just go in and quickly correct that to make sure that it all lines up properly. And with a scene that's this large and complex, sometimes it will take me a little bit to notice when there's a mistake present, but that's why I really take my time before moving on to the inks to really double and triple check everything to make sure that there's no inaccuracies. Um, because, you know, in the past I would sometimes move right into inks and then realize that something didn't look the way I wanted it to. So I would have to go and erase the inks and then go back to the sketch layer and make the correction. And there's nothing wrong with that sometimes, but it is good to really have a thorough eye for what you're doing. So that way you don't have to go back and do extra work later on. Okay, and that's what I'm going to start doing here, is sketching in some of the background people. And now since they're a little bit further away and not really the central focus of the scene. They can actually be simplified a little bit more, much like some of the subjects in the scene that are further away into the distance. So I'm basically just sketching the general outline of the people without really emphasizing too much of the detail. Because again, since they're further away, you don't have to add that much detail, but it should be pretty clear that that's what they are. That there are in fact, people and groups of people in the scene. And now over here in the background behind the police car, we're going to add more groups of people. What I'm drawing crowds in the distance like this, I usually always just start with a bunch of simple rectangles. And then I just go and sketch in an oval for the head, as well as, you know, a couple of lines to show the arms and where the lights are separated. Okay. Okay. Hi. Alright, and now that most of the pencils for this scene are laid in, the last few things I'm going to do here are basically just going through the entire piece and doing some touch ups, cleaning up some of the messy areas, doing readjustments, just erasing certain areas and doing redraws. Basically just getting the pencils to look exactly right for when I go and do the inking stage next. And just to wrap up here. So with a big scene like this or any complicated background scene that you're drawing. You know, always just kind of move through at your own pace and take your time. Don't feel like you have to rush through anything because then you'll get overwhelms pretty easily and that's what we try to avoid. So I've recorded this over the period of at least a couple of days, you know, I didn't sit down and do all this in one day. So it's all about just knowing what you can handle in that moment of time and just being comfortable moving at your own pace. Because as slower progress as you feel you're making in the moment, you know, you're still making progress, you're still moving forward, even though you may be taking small baby steps. If you just keep doing that consistently, consistently, you will notice that it all compounds over time. And eventually you will be in a place that you once thought you may not be able to reach, but you just have to keep persevering, keep moving forward. And eventually you will start to see big, big progress. Alright guys, that basically wraps up Lesson 3 here. These pencils are now ready to be inked. So let's move into lesson for next, where we're going to, as I said, ink this entire scene and get the clean line art ready to do the colors in Photoshop later on in lesson 5. So thank you guys so, so much for watching. I hope you'll learn a lot here. And I appreciate you sticking around through the whole process. So without further ado, let's move into the next lesson. 6. Lesson 4: Inking the Pencil Sketch (Part 1): And there guys, in this fourth video lesson, I'm going to be simply taking the pencil sketch from the lesson 3 and tracing over it with clean inks in order to get ready for color in the fifth lesson. Now I'm going to be taking a portion of the process and walking you through it while offers and helpful inking tips. And then I've decided to break up the rest of the process into two separate videos, each of which will be spent up a little bit. Now before starting inking, a few tips to keep in mind right off the bat are to always vary your lightweight so that way the line art looks more interesting rather than just using one single thickness throughout. You want to also make sure that on any of the subjects, the outermost contour lines are thicker than the innermost detail lines. And finally, any object that's closest to the viewer will have thicker lines, then any object that appears to be further into the distance. This really shows the depth of field and the perspective of the scene. So with that said, let's get right to it. All right guys, welcome to lesson 4, where we're going to take the pencil lines that we created in Lesson 3, and now we're going to ink everything. So here I've created a new layer above the pencils and I'm going to call it background inks. And now I'm going to take the pencil layer from lesson three and lower the opacity of that one. That way we can trace over it with the black inking pen. Okay, first I'm going to start by inking this taxi cab here upfront. And now the reason I flip the entire canvas like this is because sometimes I find it to be easier to get a much smoother line whenever I'm drawing like a curved area or even if it's like slightly curved, sometimes it's a little easier. Or then if that doesn't work out, for example, I have gone and used the blind stabilization tool, which can be found up top next to the symmetry tool. And that basically allows you to create a really smooth, crisp, curved line without any shakiness. You know, if you're having a little trouble, that is always an option to use. It's really helpful. So something I definitely recommend, but if that's something you'll need to use at all times. All right. Now, Mr. Inking the headlights here and the front grill area, also just moving ahead, I've decided to break up the inking section of this course into three separate videos. So this first sub lesson of less than four, I am going to be walking you through a little bit of the process. And then in the second two, I'm going to be speeding up the process recording just a little bit. Because I'm going to explain the general gist of inking and, you know, my tips that I like to keep in mind. But for the rest of it, it'll be pretty self-explanatory and it'll be a means for you guys to just watch the entire process and see everything that goes into creating the final line art before moving into the colors in Lesson 5. And now certain areas in the inking stage, like here, for example, I'm going to just fill in with black altogether. And then what I'm gonna do is take that line stabilization tool that I used before. And I'm going to grab the eraser and basically just erase sections of this blacked out section to create the texture of the front grill area. And then to create the Toyota logo here above the front grill section, I'm going to grab the ellipse tool and kinda just set and adjust that properly. And then that way I'll be able to create a perfect ellipse. That, that way there won't be any jaggedness. Or any work sides of it, it'll just be a perfect circle, which is what we're going for here. And I'm just going to draw the rest of it. And then much like I just did with the Toyota logo, I'm going to use the Ellipse tool again too. Headlights, because we want to draw a pretty perfect circles here. So that way it all looks nice and clean and crisp. And using the ellipse tool is the perfect thing to do in order to pull that off. And now we'll go and do the same on the other side as well. Hello. Okay. There's two. All right, and now as I go and start outlining some of the outermost contour lines of the car. It's important to note that one tip that I like to keep in mind for effective inking is to always make the outermost contour lines the most thick, while the innermost detail lines should be a lot thinner. And this is just to make your line art look more interesting and dynamic. You know, you never want to use the same line thickness throughout the entire drawing because that just makes everything look a little bit too flat and lack dimension. So again, always keep this in mind when you're inking. And typically as well, areas that are least exposed to a light source will have the most thick lines. And it's important to practice making those smooth transitions from thick to thin and really varying the line weight throughout your drawing. And now there's really no secret or shortcut to getting better at this. It really just depends on how much work and effort you put into practicing. Because, you know, through repetition and trial and error and pushing through the frustration of dealing with feeling stuck or stagnant. Are you dealing with that feeling that, Oh man, I'm not improving despite the work I'm putting in. You just keep doing that over and over again. You will eventually see breakthroughs. And at some point, you will become much more competent with creating your line art. And you'll be able to create really smooth, crisp, competent lines as shown here. Okay? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. And then I'm going to move on to inking the tires. So I'm gonna go and grab the Ellipse tool once again. So that way we can get nice perfect ellipses here and ovals. So I'm just going to adjust that until it matches the shape of the pencil sketch underneath. And then I'm just going to outline it. And then I'm gonna do the same thing by shrinking the Ellipse tool so that way we can get the inner part of the tire. And then also with the bottoms of the tire is you wanna make sure that they both wind up evenly. So I recommend just turning the Perspective tool on and just drawing a quick little light guidelines to make sure that they both wind up evenly. And we're going to do the same for the back wheel as well. And then just add some of those innermost details on the tire rims. And then I'm just going to fill in these sections of the tire with black, much like I did with the front grill section and the bottom part of the car. Now for the front windshield and side windows, what I'm actually going to do is create another layer below the background inks and lower the opacity of it just a little bit. And I'm going to fill it in entirely with black. But due to the decreased opacity, the color is going to appear to be a dark gray. And what I'm gonna do is keep this as a separate layer for now. So that way I can kind of create like a reflective sort of windshield type of surface. And the next one I'm going to do is grab the eraser tool and just erase sections of these filled-in areas like so. And I'm of course going to adjust the size of the eraser or so that way, I can erase smaller areas. And I'm going to throw in a couple of much thinner lines. We can add a little bit more detail to this. And then again, go back with the eraser tool and decrease the size of it a little bit. Then what I'm gonna do here is decrease the opacity of the Eraser tool and then blow up the size of it. So I can get a nice even gradients erasing effects from the top-down. And there we have it. There's our reflective windshield surface. And we go ahead and save my work as well. Remember, as I stated before, save as often as possible just in case something crashes or something has to force a shutdown and that way you won't lose any of your work. So now we're gonna move to this other taxi to the right of the piece. And I'm gonna go through the same process as we did with that first one. In a lot of ways, doing the inking can be just as if not more time-consuming than actually drawing in the pencils, which we did in the previous lesson. Because the inking is all about tightening up the lines and finalizing the artwork for the colors. And just this one section in this video alone, just inking these cars. A little bit more of the piece did actually take a little over an hour about, I'd say an hour and 20 minutes or an hour and a half just to do those. So and that's why I decided to break up the inking section into a few different videos because in total it would just be very long. So I figured breaking it up a little bit would be useful. This picture over here. Okay? So again, it's about making sure certain objects are aligned with one another. The same goes for the side mirrors here on the cars. I'm always make sure that the bottoms of them are perfectly aligned with one another. So that way you won't have one that's a little higher or a little lower than the other, they should be in perfect alignment. Yes. Right? Hey, This. Hey everyone. Alright, now let's create our reflective windchill, the surface effect. And I'm actually going to create this one on the same layer as that of the first car, because it doesn't make sense to have them on two different layers when it's the same exact effect. So best to put similar things on the same layers just so that way he thinks they were organized. So I'm going to do that again. I'm going to take the eraser and erase through certain sections of that filled in area like so. And then take the eraser tool in a minute here and blow it up, lower the opacity. And that way we can get a nice gradient, erase from the top-down. And then just to show some areas of shading, I'm going to turn on the Perspective tool and just quickly hash out some straight lines underneath the cars to represent a bit of a cast shadow. And keeping the Perspective tool on while you're doing this is real simple because if you use just the regular ruler, you, you know, you'll have to reposition the ruler tool and then draw the line and repeat the same process. So when, when you have the Perspective tool on, you can basically just leave it in its predetermined position and then just sketch away. And you'll be able to create pretty smooth, crisp, straight lines. And do the same with the car and the back as well. And then I'm going to start drawing the lines on the pavement. And if you notice, I started out by drawing the two straight lines, going back to the vanishing point and then cutting them into, cutting the one shape into a couple sections and then erasing to form multiple rectangles here, much like I did with the Windows previously. And all goes back to that idea of making sure different objects and shapes are in alignment. And I'm gonna go over here and start working on this section. And now, especially with any markings on the pavement, it is important that those lines are very perfectly straight and crisp and sharp. So keeping the perspective to on, and using that to your advantage is definitely a must. But then for some of these more diagonal lines that don't follow the path, the perspective, you will need to use a regular ruler. Individually, draw out those lines. A little bit more time consuming, but I guess the light is nice and straight and smooth and sharp. This character. Okay? Here. This. Thanks. Hey everyone. Hello. System. All right. Okay. Let's see. Hey. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. You guys, this pretty much wraps up part one of three up the inking section of this course. So do you picked up a thing or two here and can use them to improve your own inking. I'll see you in the next video segment. I'll continue inking this scene. 7. Lesson 4: Inking the Pencil Sketch (Part 2): Hi guys, Welcome to part 2 of the inking section of my background's course. For some reason, part of the right part of the piece that is now inks, part of that process recording was somehow lost and I was not able to recover it. But, you know, that's the results of the inking of that section and now I'm just going to continue on forward with inking the rest of these background buildings and other subjects that are in this scene. I pretty much explained my tips for engaging in the first part of the lesson and kind of briefly went through all of the tools that I use. I'm gonna kinda just speed this one up a little bit. So we can get to the coloring part, which I'll have a lot more to explain in that section. And now after this part there's one more video segments were all fully complete inking this background. So thank you guys so much for watching and enjoy. Okay. Okay. Hi. Two. Hello. So this lecture, okay. Okay. There we go. Yes, sir. Okay. Okay. Okay. Since then. All right, guys, so we are almost there. I've decided once again to split up this inking section into three separate videos. So in the final video coming up next, I will go and complete the entire background scene. Full details in all cell. Thank you guys again, and I will see you in that video lesson next. 8. Lesson 4: Inking the Pencil Sketch (Part 3): All right guys, welcome to the third section of the inking portion of my background's course. Here, I'm going to be continuing and finishing up all of the inked line art for this background scene of Time Square. And then we're going to get ready to add color in the final lesson. As I said in the previous video, everything that I explained was in the first video lesson and I went through all the tools I use. So I'm kinda just speeding up the process a little bit in these final two sections so we can get all the line art finalized and get it ready to add a splash of color, which in my opinion is always the best part because it really brings everything together and hits it all home. Now as we get into, into more of the nitty-gritty details of the background when it comes to inking, I would say the one aspect that will be most time consuming, our drawing the windows and some of the background signs on the buildings as well. But mainly it's going to be the windows because it's just a lot of meticulous detail and making sure the lines are straight and in line with one another. And just having that eye for detail to make sure you don't miss anything. So I would say that this is probably the most time-consuming part of the entire thing when it comes to the inking section. But don't feel as if you have to rush through it at your own pace and take your time and I assure you you will be able to pull it off exactly how you want it. And here what I'm doing is I'm going and grabbing the paint bucket tool to fill in the glass sections of the windows. Because later on when I do colors, I'm going to actually do a bit of a gradient fade overlay to show that there's some reflection going on. But first, I want to make sure that the underlying base is all filled with a solid color. That way I can pull off that reflective surface looking appearance. Hello. So for this course, okay, hello. Let's walk through this. In this lecture. What's up? Hello. In this example. Let's see. Hello. Okay. Okay. Okay. Hello. Okay. Yeah. So one of the last things that I'm going to be doing in this video is applying the pavement texture. So what I did was I created a new layer below the background layer. And I grab the brush from the halftone section, the brush pallet. And I basically just filled in all of the section of the pavement that is visible. Now what I'm doing here is taking the eraser tool and erasing all of the areas on the pavement where there is writing or these lines, for example, because they're supposed to be white. So I'm going and just erasing all parts of that Halftone brush that overlapped into those sections. Are you guys? And this pretty much wraps up the inking portion of this background scene. Hope you enjoyed this. And in the final lesson, we will go ahead and start adding color in Photoshop. 9. Lesson 5: Adding Color (Part 1): Hey guys, in this fifth and final video lesson, I will be taking the ink liner from lesson four and bring it into Photoshop to add color. This is always my favorite part of the process because adding the color really makes everything pop and brings it all to life. So I'm going to be walking you through each step of my process, from laying in the flat colors to rendering the light values and areas of shading. As well as adding any of the final touches in details at the end to really tied together. And like I do listen for, I'll be splitting this up into three separate video segments because of the length. So and at the end, final video lesson of explaining the class project to you as well. So be sure to stick around for that. With that being said, let's do this. All right guys, welcome to the fifth and final lesson of my background's course. As you can see here, I've already started laying in some of the flat colors, though the first segment of the recording got lost for some reason and I wasn't able to find it. But anyway, I'm just going to briefly explain what I've done so far. So pretty much. What I did with the entirety of the scene was I took a light tone of gray and I filled it in. And this is so I have a bit of a base to work off of. And basically how I did that was I took the magic one tool which can be found on the left-hand toolbar. It's the fourth tool down, I believe. And basically I went and I clicks all of the negative space in the sky above the old buildings. And then when I did next was I went up to select in the top-left toolbar. And from the drop-down menu you want to click Inverse, and that will basically invert the selection. And then I just filled in that selected area with the paint bucket tool. Next, what I did was I created a couple of different layers for these cars. And I'm actually placing the flats for the cars on their own layers. That way in case I need to make any changes or adjustments with the color later on and it won't affect any of the other layers. And for me it's just a good way to keep everything nice and organized. So as you can see, I've started by laying in the flats for the cars, and now I'm gonna go ahead and proceed with the rest of the scene. And now with laying in the fled colors. It sometimes depending on the level of detail and complexity in the scene, it can actually almost take just as long, if not longer than the actual rendering process. I believe, for laying in the flats for the entirety of this scene took about 2.5 hours in one sitting. So just goes to show you how some step as seemingly simple as just laying in the flat colors can end up taking quite a while. Hi. And now normally when I discuss Lang in the plant-based colors for any piece, I always like to say that it's best to choose base colors that are more neutral. On the color wheel, meaning that you don't want to choose colors that are too doled out or to post a grayscale. Because then they just seemed a little they just seem a little bit too washed out. And you also don't want to choose colors that are too overly saturated either. Because when you think about it in real life. The way colors appear always, they always appear to be more neutral. Like somewhere in the middle ground between two washed out and too saturated. So you definitely want to go with colors that are more along those lines. Because again, in real-life, things are never overly saturated and it's just not really a good look when it comes to doing colors. So that's a rule of thumb I always like to keep in mind when choosing the flats for any of my art pieces. And now in Photoshop in order to open up the color picker palette tool, at the very bottom of the toolbar on the left side, you'll see two colors, swatch squares. Just double-click on the one on top. And that will open up the window for, for picking any color of your choosing. Okay? Now what I'm doing here is I have grabbed the magic one tool, which again can be found on the left hand toolbar. It's the fourth tool down from the top below, the selection tool. And when you've got multiple detailed sections like on these potted plants, I always find it helpful to just simply grab the magic one tool and pick and select each of those sections to be able to fill everything in with the same base color at the same time. Okay. Here. You notice I did the same thing here for the actual plants within the pots, but sometimes for smaller details like the blades of grass here. I'll just pick the paintbrush tool, decrease the brush size, and I will just basically manually fill in those areas. So there are so small. The first character. Here. Welcome back. Hello. Okay. This is interesting. Okay. Hi. There. Okay. Hello everybody. And now I'm just going to go through and begin laying in the flats for the buildings. As I've stated in previous videos. I do have the reference image that I drew this scene based off of open on the side. So that way I can get all the colors looking the way that I want them to and the way they appear in the image. So always keep the reference material on hand just in case. Because for a scene that's this complicated, it can be very tricky to memorize every every part of it to memory. So just keep it open so you can look at it from time to time and so forth. Yes. Yeah. Okay. And now for some of the larger sections, like these two pieces of signage above the Disney sign here. What I'm gonna do is grab the polygonal lasso tool, which is the third tool down on the left-hand. We're on the screen. And I'm basically just going to create selections. And I love this tool because it allows you to create straight lines when you're selecting areas. So it's not like the free form lasso tool where, you know, it's just that it's very free form and motion. With this, it's basically like you're setting up rulers and you're boxing out each section to be able to fill it in all at once. Okay. So what some of these smaller details here, I once again just basically took the brush tool. Don't have to be anything, doesn't have to be anything too fancy. Just be real simple, basic brush tool. And I made sure that the pen pressure sensitivity setting was turned on. So that way I can kind of get that feathered edge. And, you know, which, which creates that nice thin to thick transition. And I'm just using that to fill in some of these smaller detailed sections. And another thing to note too, if you're ever using the magic one tool to fill in areas to make selections. You only want to make sure that there's no gaps or openings in your line art anywhere. Because if there are, even, even if it's just the slightest opening, the fill is going to bleed out into the negative space around it, which is what we don't want. So you always want to make sure your lines are sealed and connected to one another. So that way that doesn't happen. But if it happens to, you, simply just go back to the ink layer. Grab the pen, the pencil, sorry, not the pencil tool, the Paintbrush tool. And just simply fill that in with the color black and you're good to go. Hello. Okay. Okay, This, so this is just air. Now, let's answer this question. Hey. So imagine this. Hey, everyone. Hello. Let's just go for it. And character. Certainly. Okay. Welcome everybody. Okay. Hello. This case study. Hi. Hi. Okay. For this, Let's say this. Okay? In this lesson. Okay, so for this next building here, notice how I'm using the Polygonal Lasso Tool once again to select one big area. And then I filled it in with a very light tan. And I like doing it this way where I go and fill in the entire section with one base color first. And then I go and layer on top of that all of the other various colors that are included. And I just think this is more efficient rather than starting out with filling in each individual section. Because it's kinda just like layering one color on top of the other. So you always want to start with the base color, with being the main tone for the entire subject. With the subject being because building. And then make this smaller selections on top of it and fill each end with their respective colors. Hi. Okay guys. So due to the length of this video, I decided to split this part up into three separate video lessons, all of which will cover the entirety of laying in the flat base colors. So thank you for watching up to this point and I will see you in the next video. 10. Lesson 5: Adding Color (Part 2): All right guys, welcome to part 2, the continuation of placing the flat base colors in our background scene here. Hello. Okay. Hello. Okay. The correct answer. Hello. Okay. Okay. Here. This, in this lecture. Okay, and now that I move to doing some of these background buildings that are further away, like I was doing in the inking step, explaining how when objects get further into the distance, less emphasis has to be put on the amount of detail involved. So some of these buildings that are really far away, I'm actually just filling them in with one tone, one color tone. And again, because they're further away, not a lot of emphasis has to be put on the detail for them. The bulk of the details should be focused on everything that's in the foreground closest to the viewer. And at any point, if you want to adjust any colors that are already laid in, all you have to do is just keep that area selected and then go up to the Image tab at the very top left. Scroll down to the hue saturation adjustment panel, panel. And you will find that and be able to easily adjust the saturation. As I said before, you'd never want to go too saturated. But, you know, you can adjust somewhere in the middle until you get the color looking right. You can also adjust the brightness and darkness of the color as well and the contrast. So just a lot of really efficient and easy tools to make the coloring process fun and enjoyable as why I love coloring in Photoshop. It's been my go-to coloring program for a while now, like the last five years at least. So it's definitely one that I recommend. Okay. Okay. Hello. This is the opposite in real life. Okay. Hello, for this question. So let's say. Hello. Okay. Hello. Hey. Okay. This case study. Here. Okay. And as I move to adding the color to some of these buildings signs, you'll notice a few of them have a bit of a gradient effect. So they're not just one or two flat colors, they're kind of mixed together with a smooth gradient. And how I achieved that was I basically selected the area with either the free form lasso tool, the polygon lasso tool, which is the one that you can create straight lines with. Or I think I just use the magic wand. And then what I'll do is I'll grab a soft edge brush tool and I'll apply one color and then go and add the next one. And that will just create a nice even smooth blend between the two. So even though we're just laying in the flat colors now, it's perfectly okay to start applying some of those simple effects into your colors. Let's get started. Well, I'm sorry. What's that? Okay. This since then. And so on. Hello. Yeah. Hello. Hi. Hi. All right, So I just went and selected another building using the polygon lasso tool. And then I went down to the color picker and the very bottom of the left-hand toolbar. And I've chosen a color, though it appears to be a little bit too dark, so I'm going to go back into it while keeping that area selected. And I'm just going to adjust the color and make it a little less saturated and a little bit lighter as well. Once again, some of the smaller sections within this building structure with a different color. Okay. So as you guys can see, Lang in the flat base colors is a lengthy process and takes quite a bit of time. So with that said, I've decided to split this up into a third video as well. So stay tuned for the next one where I will continue and finish laying in the flat color is in preparation for the color rendering. Thanks guys. See you in the next video. 11. Lesson 5: Adding Color (Part 3): All right guys, welcome to the final video segments of placing in the flat base colors for our background scene up Times Square. After this video, we will start the colour rendering process. Hi, everybody. Okay. Hi. Okay. This yes. Hello. Okay. And so forth. Yeah. Hello. This is an open set. Okay. Okay. So now with this building sign here on the left-hand side of the piece, There's a bit of a gradient effect that appears in the background behind all of the content that's being shown on it. So what I usually like to do is I start with adding the gradient and then, oh, apply the other colors over that. Because if you do the opposite and you apply the colors of all of the subjects on the sign first, and then you try to add the gradient. It can be a little tricky trying to get around all the colors you've already placed. So this is why I just like to start with the gradient as the base, and then gradually build on top of that with the other flat base colors as well. Let's see Here. Hi. This, now that we have hi, hello for this lecture. Okay. Hello. Again. This Temperature, circular motion, so forth with this character and so forth. Hi. Now one other area of the piece that I've decided to also put on its own layer is the background people. So at the beginning, I felt them in, I fill that entire section in with a dark shade of gray. And what I basically did was I went to the Hue Saturation Adjustment panel and I basically just lightened that tone of gray a little bit. And like I said, I'd like to just keep certain things on their own layers just to keep everything organized. And that way the flats are not all grouped together. So that way if I need to go and adjust something on any one part of the piece and you know, I can do so without affecting the rest of it. Okay. And now once everything has been placed here in the cityscape, I'm going to just lay in the sky. So I'm gonna go to my color picker and pick a very light tone of blue Paint Bucket tool and just fill in that whole section. Then I'm going to go back to the color picker and choose a lighter shade of blue. And then grab the gradient tool and basically just create a nice smooth blended gradient from the bottom up. Like so. Just a real soft smooth transition from that lighter blue to the darker blue above. And now I'm going to create another layer above the sky and prominent place in the clouds. And here in Photoshop, I have the special cloud brushes, which you can just start anywhere online and download them. But you can also just start adding them with a simple feathered or soft edge brush tool. So I'm gonna lay those in with the color white, as shown here. And in between some of the bigger fluffy clouds, I'm just going to add some, some lighter, thinner ones as well. Then what I'm gonna do is take the blending tool, which is on the left hand toolbar below the gradient tool. And I'm just going to start smearing and blending some of the cloud edges a little bit. Just so I get that contrast between a bit of a sharp edge. On parts of the cloud along with the softer edges. And in order to adjust the amount of blending that you want to create at the very top, below the top navigation bar, you'll see a section that says strength. That is the Blending strength of the brush. So if you want to achieve less blending, you'll want to decrease the strength. But if you want like really easy smooth blending, then you'll want to increase the strength to around 90 or a 100. But I recommend keeping it somewhere. Yeah, especially for achieving this appearance with the clouds. You'll want to keep it somewhere in between, I'd say 60 and 80 percent. And now we're just going to go and do that with all of the clouds that appear here. And then next I'm going to take B. Then next I'm going to take the eraser tool and kind of feather the edge of the brush a little bit. That way I can kinda just lightly erase some of the edges and areas that I feel should be a little bit more faded. And then if I realize I went and erase too much, I can just simply go back and take the smudging tool and kind of blend out those areas again. All right guys. So we're nearly done with Lang the flats here for this scene. So just to do a little recap, few things, important things to keep in mind when you're going through this step in the coloring process is to kinda separate and organized different areas of the piece. So for example, like in this scene there are some cars and background people. It's good to keep them on their own groups of layers separate from the flats of the rest of the background. So that way, if later on you need to so happy to make any adjustments for whatever reason, it won't affect the rest of the piece. Also, when choosing flat colors, you want to make sure that you're choosing ones that are a little more neutral and fall somewhere in between. Too saturated and too washed out. That's always the best way to go. And then you can always use the hue saturation adjustment panel, which can again be found at the top-left toolbar. When you go to image and scrotal the dropdown menu, you'll find that option. And you can use that to easily adjust any of the colors that you lay in. You can no, you can change the contrast or lightness or darkness of the color and even make it more or less saturated. All right, so that concludes this segment of the coloring portion of this course. Stay tuned for the next lesson where we'll go and start rendering all of the colors in this scene. Thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. 12. Lesson 5: Adding Color (Part 4): All right guys, welcome to video 2 in the coloring portion of my background's course. Now because of the length of the rendering portion, I've decided to split this part up into two videos. So in this one, I'll start doing the colour rendering, and then I will then complete it in the third video. Okay, first thing we're gonna do here now is we're going to add a color grading, otherwise known as a color adjustment layer above the background flats. So first choose a dark shade of gray from the color picker panel. And then what you're going to, what we're gonna do is go to the keyboard and press Control Alt Shift while hovering over the flats. And then when you press these three keys, a little box will appear right next to the pointer. You then want to click the flats layer and that will select the entire thing. Then go to the layer above it that we just created and fill it in with that dark shade of gray using the paint bucket tool. Then what that layer is still selected. We're going to go into the Hue Saturation Adjustment panel. And we're just going to find a nice even color tone. So that way everything is nice and cohesive. And we don't want it to be too saturated either. So we're gonna go with this color tone and also this layer is going to be on the Blend Mode hard light. But when it's on normal, it will appear as a more neutral shade of purple, kind of leaning towards grade, but as a little bit of a purple tone to it. And then just turn it back to hard light. And then you'll get that nice even blending. And not to worry, this won't be the final appearance of the rendering at the end, this is just the initial base color adjustment layer. But in a bit here we're going to start adding some of the light tones on top of this layer. And it's all going to blend really nicely together. As you can see here. I'm also going through the same steps and doing it with the, the people. They're flat color tone. As I stated in the last video, I put that on its own layer. For this very purpose. To that way, I can kinda keep everything organized and I can create a color adjustment layer on one part of the scene without affecting the rest of it. And also this will be helpful later on when I go to actually do the rendering, I can actually just select the people individually without affecting the rest of the scene. And then also I'm going to do the same thing with the cars as well. And then I'm going to go through the same steps with the cars as well. So we're going to press Control Alt Shift on the keyboard, hover over the flats layer until we see that little box appear next to the pointer. Then click it to re-select the flat colors we placed in the other video. And then create a new color adjustment layer above it and fill it in with the exact same color tone that we used for the entirety of the background. And now that the color adjustment layers are placed, once again, set each of those to the blend mode Hard Light. Now we're going to create the light tones above these layers. So we're going to start with these foreground cars first. So what I did was I went and created a new layer above the color grading layer. And I just named it like dashed cars. Just keep it to keep it real simple. And, you know, always good to name your layers as well, especially when you have a lot of them. So that way you know what things actually are and where they are. And so that way you don't get confused at all. And when I'm actually doing here is I'm grouping each of these subsections into their own group. So for example, I'm putting all the cars into one group, the background cars into another group. And then I'm also going to put the crowds of people in a third group apart from the rest of the background and buildings and such. Now what I'm gonna do is start adding the light tone. So I've created a new layer above the color grading layer for the cars, and I'm going to call it light dashed cars. And I set it to the blend mode of color dodge. Next one I'm going to do is go to the color picker and choose a sort of darker shade of yellow that's, has a little bit more saturation because basically when you have the blend mode of color, dodge on, any dark color is going to appear lighter with a softer edge brush tool. And now I'm going to start applying some of these light tones just as the initial base coding if you want to put it that way. So I'm gonna go ahead and start applying that to the top of the car. And as you can see now with the color grading layer beneath the light. Layer and above the flats, you get kind of a little bit of a shading effects now with the light applied to it, even though that's just the color adjustment layer when you start applying the light values. Now, it kind of appears to have a little bit of shading to it. Alright, now that I've got that initial coat laden, I'm going to start erasing certain areas to kinda create form and dimension on the cars. So basically what I've done here is I've selected the area around the tire. And what I'm gonna do is just lightly erase around the edges a little bit. So that way we can give this a little bit of a three-dimensional appearance. So that way it doesn't look so flat. And that's really the main idea with the color rendering. It's to give your piece form and dimension. So that way everything doesn't appear once again to be so flat. And now we're just going to continue to do the same thing throughout the rest of the car. Next, with this section here. And one neat thing you can do with the free form lasso tool or any of the selection tools is since we have that flat color layer N. And I mentioned that you can easily select the entire layer by simply pressing Control Alt Shift on the keyboard and then hovering over the layer. You can actually do that with any selection and then snap it right to the flat layer. So if you notice here, I actually went outside the lines here with the selection just to speed it up a little bit. But what I just did was I snap a selection to the flat layer using that keyword combination, and then I go back to the light layer. It's just inefficient way to move through the process. So that way you don't have to worry about keeping all the selections right inside the lines. You can actually go outside the lines a little and easily snap the selection rate to the object. And now that I've got that selection in, I'm going to take soft edged eraser tool and just erase a little bit more of the light color tone from that section. And now this course starting to take shape a little bit more and look less flat and more three-dimensional. For other more minor areas of the car, such as down underneath the license plate, I'm going to make smaller selections. And then actually I'm going to take the same color, yellow that we used for that initial layer of the light tone. And I'm going to apply that down here as well. Just so that way, these other parts of the car have a little bit more form and dimension as well. And what's great about having the light tones on their own layer is that if you are, if you need to erase or blend or kinda smudge any area of it, you could easily do so without affecting the color adjustment layer or the flat colors below it. That's precisely why it's so important to keep all of your steps of the rendering process on their own layers, including the shading layers and everything else. Because again, it just keeps everything separated that way. An adjustment to one will not affects the other whatsoever. The Civil War. Here we are. So let's say so. We take so for the hood of the car here to show that the front of it curves a little bit. I'm going to select the entire area and then just lightly erase along the front edge of the selection here with a soft edge eraser tool. Now, now that we've done that, we can see that clearly the front of the hood slopes down a little bit as it approaches the front grill section. In this case. We're also going to do a little bit of erasing of the light tones on the front windshield In addition. So that way it appears the windshield has a little bit more dimensionality and it's not just the one single tone of light yellow from the light layer. So we're going to just erase some areas of that. And then in a little bit, we're actually going to take that and adjust the entire color tone. With the hue saturation color adjustment option. It'll be a little bit more of a shade of blue worship rather than yellow. Hi, This. So to speak. Okay. Hi. And then we're gonna do the same thing here with this other car, the police car to the left. And basically just go through and start giving the form some dimension here, just like we did with the taxi. And basically it just involves a lot of making selections to certain areas of the car and then erasing, adding, blending, but never affecting the layer below it. You're basically just on the white layer the whole time. You're just making adjustments with that without affecting anything else? Okay. Yes. Hello and character. Okay? Okay. This character here in terms of function. And then we'll move to the car on the right side of the piece. That taxi that slightly in the background behind the first one that we rendered. And once again, go through the same process, select the entire car. And then we're going to add the light layer using that same tone of yellow that we used on the first two cars. And remember to sit, oops, I accidentally. Also another thing that is important to keep in mind is to make sure that you're on the right layer when you're adding blight values or doing anything really. Sometimes what Photoshop will do is, I guess it experiences glitches. And it will just automatically change layers on you. So if you're not careful, you could end up working on the wrong layer. So always important to keep a watchful eye over that and make sure you're actually working on the layer that you want to work on it. Okay? And character. Everyone. Okay. Welcome everybody. The next lecture. Hello. Again. Let's see. When you're coming up. What's up? Hi. The typical test. Hello. Two. Now that we've got the initial light layer set in, I'm going to sort of brighten it up a little bit. And I'm gonna do that by taking the light layer and duplicating it a bit with the same blend mode. The only difference is with this copy layer, I'm just going to decrease the opacity of it a little bit. Because if not, the exposure is just a bit too intense for the light. We don't want that. We want it to be toned down a little bit, but not as doled out as it was before. So I basically just copied the layer and blended it on top of the original white layer. As I mentioned previously, we're now going to go and take a light tones on the windshield of the car is. And we're just going to do a little color adjustment for those two more. So match the reflection of the sky because of course the sky is blue. And in this case we want the color tone of the windshields to kinda match and reflect that. So again, we're going to adjust the color from more of an orangey yellow as it appears here, to a lighter blue. And once again, we're going to go back to the hue and saturation adjustment option from the top menu. And just do a simple adjustment of the hue as well as the saturation. And we should be good there. And I actually wasn't satisfied with that, so I just went back in and add a few more adjustments. So we're good we're good with this, and we can do the same with the other two car windshields. This is for What's up. Hello. So to speak. Let's get started. Okay. This Let's real quick search everything. Okay. This is short for character. Okay. Hi, everyone. Okay, we have applied all of the initial light layers, adjusted some of the color tones. Now we're going to add some highlights. For the highlights layer. I'm going to create that above all of the existing layers I've made so far. And then I'm going to Control Alt Shift and hover over the original light layer and select that. Now we have that selected. I'm going to go back to the highlights layer we just made. And I'm going to set that to the blend mode to overlay. Now with either a very light tone of blue or white, I'm going to add highlights within the selected areas. And this will be especially evident on the windshield as the tone of blue is a little bit darker. So it'll be a nice contrast. Hi, and these lighter tones of blue that we're adding here. And then in addition, we're also going to add some highlights on the way she holds in other parts of the car where the light source is hitting the most. Since this data. This okay. Like we just did for the one taxi. Now, we're going to do the same thing with the cop car right here and the other cars as well. So we're gonna go and select me white layer that we created earlier in the video with the keyboard command Control Alt Shift. And then we're going to add a highlight layer over the other existing layers that we created already. To add a bit more of a reflective effect on the windshields. I am going to go and create a new layer above the background layer from Lesson 4. And I'm going to call it when shields. And basically I'm just going to add soft edge brush tool, a bit more of a fade in touch. So I'm gonna set this layer to Hartley and choose a lighter tone of blue. And then we're just going to lightly lay this down over the enquire. Wasn't happy with it, so I actually just made the color tone a little bit lighter and I reapplied it. And now I'm purposely going over the outlines of the windshield. And that's okay to do because once everything's laid in, I'm going to then take a hard edge eraser tool and erase around the edges to keep this blue fade within the area that it should be contained in. Like I'm already doing here on the side windows, I just took a smaller eraser tool and I've basically just erasing around the edges. So that way there's no fate overlay over the actual line art. Okay, now we're gonna go and do the same thing with the other two curves. For the sake of keeping everything organized, what I'm going to create multiple layers for each car windshield. We're just going to stay on that same layer that we just created. And we're going to just go through the same steps. Once again. A is spectacular. Okay? Okay. Hello. In this lesson. Okay, and now what I'm actually going to do is take that when she'll layer and I'm going to go and change the blend mode a little bit from hard light to pin light. Just because I felt it gives a more of a reflective appearance. Lens a little bit better with the ink layer below. So I'm going to set that as the final blend mode. And we're good to go there. So this concludes Section 2 of the coloring portion of the backgrounds course. So stay tuned for the final video up next, where I will complete the rendering of the rest of the background and the buildings. So thanks so much guys, and see you there. 13. Lesson 5: Adding Color (Part 5): All right guys, welcome to the final video segment in the coloring portion of my background's course. Here, I'm going to completely finish rendering the entire scene. Now that we've got the cars rendered, which we did in the previous video. We're gonna go ahead and tackle the rest of the scene. And basically I'm going to use a lot of the same methods and techniques that I applied in the previous video to the taxi cabs and the police car. Basically with the lighting, we're going to go ahead and apply the same thing with the buildings and the rest of the subjects in the scene. So remember, you always want to have the light layer on Color, Dodge and senior as we shipped it back to the normal blend mode, you can see it's a darker tone of yellow. That's what we want to use because when we switch to color dodge, it's going to give the appearance of a lighter tone of yellow. So we're gonna go to the overall cityscape and create a light layer above the color adjustment layer that we laid down earlier in the coloring section. And now we've established that the light source will be coming from the front, from behind the viewer. So that means all of the main light is going to be hitting the plains and parts of the structures that are facing us that are facing forward, basically. Two. Okay. Okay. Okay, as you can see here, I'm using the Polygonal Lasso tool to select different areas of the buildings to lay in the light tones, much like I was doing earlier when I was laying the flat colors. I use the same polygon lasso tool to select certain areas of buildings to place the flat colors in. This one, we're using it to place the light tones. And I'm also using the same tone of yellow that I applied in the foreground. Cars. That darker, a little bit saturated tone of yellow. And we're going to use that all throughout the rest of the piece. I say it all the time, but doing the colour rendering and applying all of the light values and the shading. It's really my favorite part of the entire creative process because it's what really starts to hit it all home and it makes the piece really come alive and pop. So again, I always say it, but it's my favorite, absolute favorite part. Hey, okay. This is the x. Excellent. Okay. Also another thing to note is once I start applying the areas of light and of course, array certain areas where there's cast shadows being thrown onto the surface. The Golden here, for example, the color adjustment layer below the light layer can act as a shaded area if you will. So it's great how the light layer kinda just blends nice and perfectly with the rest of the colors below. So now that color adjustment layer is kind of like the shaded area. And mean, meaning that we don't really have to add a separate area of shading. It kinda goes hand in hand when you apply the light areas. And when I'm simply doing here is just taking a small eraser tool with a hard edge. And I'm just The areas where objects that are out there. Okay. Let's talk about that. Here. Welcome back. Some kind of response. Welcome back. As a remainder. And now I'm going to shift gears a bit and I'm going to now apply the same light tones to the road and the pavement underneath the cars. So what I'll first need to do is create a selection and select that entire area. Which I will do with the polygon or lasso tool, since there's a lot of straight edges along the liner here. So the polygonal lasso tool is the best to use because it allows you to create nice straight lines to form a nice clean selection. To users. And now once that's all selected, I'm going to grab a soft edge brush tool, increase the brush size a bit. And then I'm going to take that same tone of yellow that we've been using. And I'm just going to apply it to the selected area on the light layer. Much like we did with the windshields of the cars, were going to take that same select an area that we just placed. And we're going to adjust the color of the light tones a bit to be more of a lighter, bluish gray type of tone. Not too overly saturated, but also not too yellow like it was we first laid it down. So we'll just make some adjustments here with the saturation and the hue a bit until we've got a nice light gray, grayish blue type. In this lesson. Yeah. What I'm doing next tier is I'm making selections on the pavement below each car to kind of add like a cast shadow, if you will. Though I shouldn't say add because I'm really erasing areas of the light tone that we just added. So I'm making selections and essentially erasing areas of the light to create a cast shadow. And now I'm starting to render some of the smaller objects in the scene, like these potted plants off to the left-hand side. So what I'm gonna do is basically grabbed the magic one tool and make selections like I did earlier when I was laying in the flat colors. When you have the option to do so using the magic one tool is just a bit of a faster, more efficient way of making selections, especially when you are rendering smaller objects like this. But like I just did before, for larger areas like the pavement or entire buildings, It's best to use a straight edge selection tool like this polygon or lasso tool. First question. Okay. Hello. Okay. Hello, In this lecture, we're going to use it. Next. I'm going to go and add that same tone of yellow to the plants. Except this time I'm going to take that selected area and I'm going to adjust the color tone a bit to be less yellow and a little more green. And then I'm gonna take that same color tone and apply it to the rest of these potted plants as well. And I want to make sure I have that same adjusted color tone selected so I can apply it to the rest of the plants as well. And I did that by taking the light layer, reverting it back to the normal state, then getting the color picker tool so I can get that exact color tone. And then to create a bit of rendering and to show that there's forum and it's made up of a bunch of smaller leaves. I'm basically just taking the eraser tool and I'm just erasing small sections of the form to create this rendering effect to show that there are no light areas meeting darker areas. Now we're going to make a profit. And now comes your spinal cord. The next topic. I can use my mouse. We've been doing when I started. As a reminder in this module. Hello. Okay guys, thank you so much for watching this portion of the colour rendering process. Now, due to the length of time of this entire video segment, I decided to split it up into two. So stay tuned for the next video where I will be completing the rendering process and adding all the final details and also explaining the class project at the very end of the final video lessons. So be sure to stay around for that one. Thanks again and see you in the next video. 14. Lesson 5: Adding Color (Part 6): All right guys, This video lesson was supposed to be the final lesson, but due to the size of the file, I had to split it up even further into two more videos, two separate videos. So there's gonna be one more after this one, in which case I'll then be finishing up this entire scene and explaining the class project. Okay. Hi. Okay. Okay. In this lecture. Hi everyone. So again. So okay. And as we've been doing with the rest of the scene, I'm just going to go through and continue to apply the same tone of dark yellow and add more areas of light on some of these other structures. And also periodically, like I've mentioned before, make sure you're on the right layer because there's nothing more annoying than working along. And then realizing that Photoshop glitch and it brought me to a layer I don't want to be on. So always refer back to the layers panel on the right and make sure that you are on the correct layer when you're adding, whether it's the light tones or shadows or whatever it is. And if that bothers you a bit, you can always go and lock all of the layers that you're not using. In the meantime, that will actually prevent any switching from carrying you to another layer that you don't want to be on. So just a little tip to use. If it starts to be bothersome, You can always lock the other layers. Hi, nice to talking about. When it comes down to trust. Hi, welcome back to the entrepreneur. When it comes down to and of course, we can go for the entrepreneur. Hi. I don't have time to respond. Looking around for the next class. Let's move back over here to your house. I'm just going to work. Yeah. Okay. Now, most of the buildings are rendered with the light source. So now like I did with the car windshields previously, I'm going to do the same thing with the building windows. And like I mentioned in the inking step in less than four, I went and filled in the windows width block. So that way they can act as a base for when I go to add reflective surface textures in the coloring stage. So we're gonna do that now. We're going to go to above the background inks layer, just below the windshield layer we added before. And I'm going to name this new layer windows one. And we're going to set the blend mode to hard light. Then what I'm gonna do is grab a lighter tone. You either either white or a very light tone of blue. And I'm just going to go over the selected areas a bit just to create a little bit of a reflective effect from the light source. And I'm just taking my time here to find the right color tone that's going to work best. And see when I turn the selection off, you can see that now the windows have a bit of a reflective effect. Then to show that the panes of glass on the windows are sunken in a little bit. I'm just going to erase around the edges near the line art a little bit to show that there is some dimension. And that, like I said, the panes of glass are sunken back into the building a little bit. And also to erase areas of the reflective fade that we applied. It bled outside of the windows. Hi. Okay. All right. We're done with that building and now we're going to move over to the right side and we're going to apply it that same window reflective effect to some of the other windows. This big one right here for and do the same thing and grab the exact same color tone that we use before. And then just simply erase around the edges to not only clean up that fade a little bit and make sure it doesn't bleed over the lines. But to show that the window glass is kind of sunken into the building a little bit green, a bit of a 3D effect. Okay, thank you guys so much for watching in the final video segment coming up next, I will be wrapping up this entire scene with the color rendering and then it also explaining the class project as well. So stay tuned. And I'll see you in the next video. 15. Lesson 5: Adding Color (Part 7): All right guys, welcome to the final video lesson, as stated in the previous video, this last section was meant to be one video, though due to the large size of the files, I was not able to upload the entire thing under Skillshare. Therefore, I had to split it up into two separate sections. So this is the final video where I'll be wrapping up the color rendering and adding all the last final touches in details at the end. And again, stay tuned for the very end of the video where I'm going to discuss the class project for you guys to work on as well. Okay. Hi. Okay. This case study. Hello. Okay. Okay. Now that we've got to perform that step with the rest of the filled in Windows. Now I'm going to go to some of the other buildings and proceed to add some reflective textures. Especially some of these buildings with a lot of the glass windows. So, and that's really easy to do. We're going to actually go back to the background layer and we're going to create a highlight flare above the city lights layer. And we're going to set that to the blend mode to overlay. And then I grabbed a very light shade of yellow and I'm just going over with a soft edge brush tool and create, creating some of these reflective effects from the light source. And now what we're gonna do is apply an effect that's going to add a new level of depth to the entire scene. And that's called an atmospheric faded. If you've ever seen real images of a cityscape or any background scene, you'll notice that any objects like buildings or mountains in the distance appear to be pretty faded out. You know, almost like a darker tone of the color of the sky. And that's because it's the particles in the atmosphere kinda interacting with the light source to make them appear that way from a distance. So what I'm gonna do here is I created a new layer above the background inks and I called it fade one. And I set that to the blend mode Hard Light. Next, what I'm doing here is taking a soft edge brush tool and applying a light tone of blue to the areas of the background that are furthest away to show that it's going further and further into the distance. And that there's a bit of a fade because of the white interacting with the particles in the air. And it just creates this really cool fade effect that's been placed in. I'm taking a hard edge eraser tool and I basically just erasing areas that are bleeding over some of the foreground subjects such as the cars. Because we don't want that this spade is only meant to appear in the background and we don't want it to overlap into the foreground at all. This also helps create depth when this background fade is separated from the foreground objects, it really conveys that there's a lot of distance between, say, the car is in the foreground and the ones way far off in the distance. Hi. Hello. Atmospheric. I'm going to take that layer and basically just make some adjustments to it because it appears to be a little bit too bright. So I'm just going to increase the saturation a little bit and darken it up slightly. So that way it's like I said, the exposure isn't so intense. Another option too, if you just kinda wanna decrease the intensity of layer, you can also just lower the opacity as well, or like I just did, you can apply a simple color adjustment. And now one last thing that I'm going to do here is add little bit of a light layer to the crowds of people so that way they can be rendered and match the rest of the scene. So I'm just going to grab that same tone of yellow that we've been using the entire time. And I'm just going to lightly brush over the groups of people with a soft edge brush tool. And then next with a small hard edged eraser tool. I'm just going to erase some areas of the light to create some shadows in areas of shading. And now on to some of the final touches. So I'm just going to apply a very light reflected glow to some of the glass surfaces in the scene. For example, the car windshields. I'm just going to add a very light reflected glow here. And then I'm gonna do the same thing with some of the background windows and some of the buildings that are comprised entirely of panes of glass, such as the ones off on the left-hand side of the piece. Hello. Hello. Another part of the scene that is going to require a bit of a glow effect is on the right side above to Disney sign. So I'm going to create a separate glow layer and call it glow to add. We're going to set it to the Blend Mode Color Dodge. And I'm just going to grab a darker shade of orange. And I'm just going to lightly brush over the flames that are present here. So that way we can really make these flames pop a little bit more. And then I'm actually going to take that layer and change the blend mode to Linear Dodge up above here, just to give it a little bit more of a bright glow. And then I'm going to go and adjust the hue and saturation a little bit so that way it's a little more saturated and darkens ever so slightly. And we're good to go there. Now when all said and done here, the last step that we're going to perform is apply some slight color adjustments to the overall scene. So that can be accessed on the right hand toolbar here. And we're just gonna go in and adjust the color balance of the whole piece. Just so that way everything is cohesive and kind of blends together effectively. And now I'm just going to turn it on and off. So you can see, even though it's a subtle change, I really think it makes all the difference overall. Alright, and that pretty much wraps up this course on creating a detailed background. Thank you guys so, so much for watching. I hope you learned a lot here and can take some of these techniques and use them to create your own detailed background. And just remember, if you have trouble grasping any of these topics at first, don't be discouraged, just keep working at it and eventually you will get better and better. Thank you guys again. And as always, keep persevering. Congratulations guys. You've made it to the end of the course and I'm so proud of you. I hope you learned a lot here and can use it to create your own scene. Which brings me to my next point, which is the class projects. So I want you to take everything that you've learned from these videos and use it to create your own background scene. You can either recreate the Times Square seen that we went through in the videos, or you can take all the knowledge you picked up and be as creative as you'd like to put together your own background using a variety of different reference images. That choice is totally up to you. And then when you've completed your work, whether you've worked out a digitally or with traditional mediums, be sure to upload it to the class project gallery as a high resolution JPEG. That way, I can take a look at Leave constructive criticism and tips for improvement. Once again, thank you guys so, so much for watching this course. Your support truly means a lot and goes along way. Hope you learned a lot here once again and until next time. Keep persevering.