How to Paint Environment Keyframes

Environments, like plein air landscapes paintings, are arguably the most complex category of concept art. Here is my developing take on what skills make up environment concept paintings. All fundamental and story skills overlap each other and improve alongside each other.

FUNDAMENTALS

1. Perspective. It's important to maintain the cohesiveness and realism of the perspective. Objects of similar sizes depicted in different sizes serve as a good anchor for establishing distance.

2. Lighting. Universal light is important for believability. Enhancements and aberrations are obviously OK, but the majority of the image should look like the same space has the same light.

3. Value. Group values and simplify them into bold shapes as the human eye reads images generally. Create hierarchy and distance with value blocks instead of overlapping the global light and dark with local lights and darks.

4. Composition. The horizon line should not be in the center, it should be close to the top or the bottom for dynamic compositions. The white values or the black values should not be 50/50 but should be exaggerated in proportion. There are a lot more composition rules in Edgar Payne's book, such as balance etc.

STORY

I struggle with this a lot, so I think it should be valued as much as fundamentals.

1. Content. Write down what scene and subjects you want to design instead of develop the content while you draw to practice design skills and measure your success. What's in the scene? Why is it in the scene? Ask yourself questions that help you make logical designs with believable stories.

2. Story. What stage of the character arc is this scene in?

3. Emotion. What do you want to convey in this shot? What does the character(s) feel?