Exercise B1: Three Tips for Backgrounds!

Today we’re going to learn some tips on how to draw backgrounds. We’re building on how to draw people and 3d objects from our earlier exercises. These are fundamentals for drawing Manga, but will also lead you down the path for any kind of art and illustration. You can click to zoom in on all these pictures.

I’d like to clear up first what a background is in Manga! Background in Manga is used behind a character to establish a scene. It’s not a landscape, or architecture drawing, which focus on depicting the surrounding. Background in Manga is a supporting character, and helps tell the story. Let’s compare:

Landscape, vs. Background by Ian of Studio Kyuu

A good background in Manga sits quietly in the background. It has enough information to give a sense of place, so your characters can act in a scene. It shouldn’t “compete” too much with the character! In Kinkade’s landscape, the emphasis is on the scene, so he pours in all the details and colors. By adding more detail and color, Kinkade is making the scene into the character!

Let’s start with the basics. We want the background to feel real, even though it is simplified. If you start with 3d cubes, you make a solid foundation for your background

The shelves in this snack shop are basic cubes. In red, we see the back of a cash register and a yogurt dispenser. In blue and green are the shelves holding the snacks. Snacks and candies are added as details on the cubes.

You can see that the blue cube is actually a little broken, but with the character in the scene it still holds together!

The next thing to think of when drawing backgrounds is to keep your line widths simple. Take a look in the areas circled in blue below:

The background objects are all drawn with a single thickness, using a Micron 01. Ian has drawn the character (and table!) with a thicker, varying line width, to make a contrast between the foreground in red and the background. Contrast is so important in drawing! We use a thick vs. thin contrast to help this background sit back.

The last tip for today has to do with coloring. Again, we want to use contrast to help the foreground pop, and the background sit. Ian has used only two levels of grey lighting in the background, but 4 levels of lighting in the foreground (white, +3 grays).