Background Painting

I just finished the 2 week Background painting workshop before the regular schedule starts up again.

Here's what I was up to:

In the first assignment, we used an existing layout and painted it monochrome. This was to emphasize depth and put a 'spotlight' on the general area where a character would move. All the assignments are done in gouache, which on this assignment I was not yet comfortable using... but it gets better :)

Here are some texture studies. I had a lot of fun with them. Using a photo reference I did the sky first. The aim wasn't to look like a photo but more like a texture one would find in animation. So I took that to heart and sweetened up the wooden fence and bricks in this fashion.

Here is a background to be painted in a day scene and a night scene. This is from an existing production and we were just interpreting it for education's sake. I've gotten more comfortable with the paint now but in both night and day I have not closed up the picture with enough darkness in the foreground and not enough light in the mid-ground.

The night scene.

Finally we were to draft our own layout for an animation background.

I had such a great time designing this and getting help with layout from my instructor. Once onto painting he let me have my way with nearly the entire piece--except the tree in the foreground, it was originally lighter. I agree that darkening it really makes it come forward. 

I had some inspiration from Looney Tunes backgrounds & Mary Blair's works.

I am really taking a liking to this graphic style.

Here's where you can view Mary's work: http://magicofmaryblair.com/

Comments & critiques are always welcome

Thanks for viewing!