Process: Bedroom Background (Patreon)

Hey all! I've been working on the background for the next scene and I finally finished. I'm trying something new: in the past I've had all the different shapes on their own layer so I can adjust as needed, but I don't anticipate I'll need to adjust much for this scene. So nearly everything is on one layer. Just the footboard and chest are separated out, because I don't want them to get in the way of closeup shots on the bed.

1. I start with the thumbnail I drew for the page and try to extrapolate it out.

2. I get the perspective tool involved to figure out the right angles.

3. I do a rough sketch.

4. Then I refine said sketch.

5. Under the sketch set on Multiply, I put down a bunch of colors. I figure out where my light sources are and consider what kind of feeling I want. For this one, I want warm and cozy and homey, so there's a ton of warmth, but it's also during the winter and at night so the shadows are deep and cold. I figure out some of the lighting on surfaces in this step too.

6. Refining colors.

All the rest is pretty much rendering and tweaking as I go. I play with colors via layer adjustments, and I work on surfaces and such.

At the end I wanted to lighten it up a little bit and I added a duplicate of the whole scene and blurred it to give it that soft-focus feel. (The layer setting I chose is "Darker colors" to keep it from washing out the scene.)