painting backgrounds
You don't need any real artistic skills to paint backgrounds, just follow a few simple rules! Check out the how to videos of the "Happy trees" guy, Bob Ross. He shows how to paint believable landscapes easily and quickly.
Just remember objects quickly decrease in size as they go off into the distance, and the atmospheric haze dulls and lightens colors and blurs detail as they move further away.
The furthest details are just simple suggestions or blurred edges, painted by lightly dabbing with a natural makeup sponge (the tan, irregular ones) dipped in a mix of the lightest sky color with a very small amount of the lightest mountain, trees or ? color mixed in over the still wet land edges.
Blot the sponge on paper towel until there is almost no paint left on it before applying it to the edges. The edges should fade into the sky.
The atmospheric haze dulls and lightens the sky color as well as it approaches the ground, so don't paint the sky all one shade of blue but keep adding dry brushes of ivory, very light grey, and/or white over the lower parts and blend into the still wet sky color so it gets lighter and lighter as it approaches the ground.
The juncture of the sky and the land should be nearly the same very pale dull color. Add a touch of dark grey or brown paint to dull the color, there should not be a hard edge between them.
Use a wide soft synthetic bristle paint brush about 3" wide (from the hardware store, NOT from an art store) for painting backgrounds. Use with a light touch of only the tips of the bristles to blend. Keep wiping any paint buildup off the brush as you blend.
Google landscape pictures of the area you are modelling for references, pay particular attention to how the sky and land meet.
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MRH Moderator: Reformatted this gray wall of text with regular paragraph breaks to make it a more pleasant read. Ahhh, that's better ... a little white space makes a BIG difference!
