Drawing A Detailed Background by Kyle Petchock

In this drawing tutorial I’ll be walking you guys through my entire artistic process for planning out and creating a detailed background scene – in this case, our subject will be Times Square in NYC. It’s no doubt that drawing backgrounds can be daunting and can seem too overwhelming, especially if you’re a beginner artist or have some experience but have never attempted it before. Depending on the scene you’re drawing, there’s lots of detailed and complex forms that you might ask yourself, “Where do I begin?” or, “How do I go about breaking all this down?”

If you find yourself asking these questions, don’t worry, there are ways to break the process down into manageable pieces. I’ll be covering the course in five separate video lessons, which are the basics of perspective / establishing the grid lines for our scene, simplifying the complex subjects with simple shapes, building upon the foundation with details (the pencil drawing), inking the pencil sketch, and finally adding color. Lessons 3, 4, and 5 have been divided into smaller sections as well due to the long length of the process as well. I’ll be covering the drawing and inking process in Autodesk Sketchbook and then bringing the line art into Photoshop to apply color. Another great alternative to Sketchbook is Clip Studio Paint if you’re drawing digitally, which also requires the use of a drawing tablet. But, you can also tackle this traditionally if you’d like as well, the choice is up to you! Have fun guys and, Keep Persevering!