To get started planning a career that works on one of the world’s most pressing problems, sign up now at 80000hours.org/pricklyalpaca Thanks to 80000 Hours for sponsoring this video! Pinterest board: pin.it/5P58U4v7l Painting videos: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ptOUlpWrtp_OpoE.htmlsi=CGOPGFT18yS_z5am kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g7GkltZ3mq-5dmQ.htmlsi=tPWYrA1wkBYjQDje kzfaq.info/get/bejne/apyng9yLlrKzp4E.htmlsi=ftlZq19m2K4Jby6j Spiderverse style: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fbV-YM2Y3pimoJc.htmlsi=RXZkPMMiqJP-snf2 City brushes: tamberella.gumroad.com/l/YLfEvh?layout=profile Foliage brushes: tamberella.gumroad.com/l/UrGvW?layout=profile

We enjoyed YOUR meal concept! (The meal concept was this awesome video)

Ah the grueling journey of art improvement. Just remember, sucking at something is the first step of being moderately better at something. You're doing great!

"I can't wait to enjoy my meal concept" I love how you're just as Drawfee-pilled as the rest of us, my vocabulary has also been irrevocably damaged by those funky fellas 🤣

I can't believe Alpaca spent 80,000 hours painting backgrounds

1. That last painting is JUICY 2. pricklyalpaca drawfee guest prayer circle

Even though I've been drawing daily for nearly two years now, I've only recently started regularly drawing backgrounds. By that, I mean make the lower half of the drawing one shade of green and the upper half a different shade of green. And, if I'm feeling particularly creative, I'll add a blue area at the top.

Ah yes my mortal enemy, backgrounds

So I went to commercial art school just before computer art took over. One of the arguments against the new tech artists was the lack of their working first in black and white and only then adding color. It was said that tech artists used color to make up for lousy perspective, values, and lighting. And that led to muddy color, etc. So, seeing you begin in gray scale first is heartening. Of course, tech artists have grown since then (i.e., dinasours). Anyway, I enjoyed watching your process. I think you're very talented, and your thirst for learning is actually exciting. Thanx for the journey.

In the tree house I think the mane problem is the lighting, in the sense that the tree house, which is the focal point, has the same dark values as the foreground which makes it all kind of meld together. I think it would be way better if the sunlight that is hitting the middle ground with the kids and the grass was also hitting the tree house, just make it really bright and with those warm tones. Having the tree with lighter values would make it stick out way more compared to the foreground and make it clearer. Another thing is that the colors all around are very similar, which is not necessarily a problem, but here it has the same effect as making the values similar, blends everything together. You definitely included a variety of greens like you said, but when it comes to separating the forest from the tree house I think it would be good to set up a base distinct color palette, for example: if you want to keep the house on the sunlight and make it really warm, try to make the colors of the forest in the foreground very cold, pushing to bluish tones, this will help build contrast. A great thing to remember is that when the sun is giving off a yellowish hue of light the shadows will be purple-ish and blue-ish because its the complementary color, you can notice this in real life, you can use this in your environments to build contrast and make more interesting color palettes. Having variety of hues is great but make sure that you have a reason for that variety, intention is very important in making art great and consistent.

As my good friend Sean says "Keep doing good art, keep doing bad art, 'cause the bad art makes you better at the good art!"

It’s not squarespace I’m confused it’s always squarespace

i talk about you so much that my friend teases me when i talk about art things "dang did you learn that from Kira?"

when she said she couldn't wait to enjoy her meal concept my drawfee braincell activated immediately hahaha, in all seriousness the video was really good and a nice display what progressing as an artist also means ! (it's not all pretty characters done in a few hours even if we do love that as well ^^)

Words cannot express how encouraging this is for me to continue on my art journey and stop being so intimidated by aspects of design I am unfamiliar with.

One thing that really helps with perspective if you're struggling on buildings is do some studies of weird close up angles of parts of a building. Strange angles looking down stairwells, angle up at some interesting rafters, etc... Even doing a stack of blocks with multiple lights helps a lot. Jumping in on a whole building if something isn't clicking can really block learning the basics of perceptive.

You critiquing your works/ setting goals was SO helpful because Im almost in the exact same situations (difficulty with values, breaking stuff down to understand it better, PERSPECTIVE)

your point about the spider-verse cityscapes stuff is so real. i eat up all the spider-verse backgrounds, fork and knife, they are all stunning, and your backgrounds were beautiful and a very good dessert for the evening!

BABE WAKE UP ALPACA POSTED!!!

buildings are my nemesis in drawings, i feel your pain -_-

This is great! Hansi of Nerdforge just did a whole course that Martina built for him, and I've been working my way through it, because I make abstract paintings, but can't draw anything from life/reference at all, and the value of many, many hours of practice can't be overstated, in my opinion. I love watching the process of building skills, because it motivates me to spend my own time building my own skills.

If you ever do a sequel of this could you draw some building interiors? Maybe some landscapes that you don't usually work with like a desert or coral reef?

Ight I found your channel like a month ago now and INSTANTLY I felt that Jenna/julien energy and I must say I’ve been obsessed ever since, your work is amazing and so inspiring as a new digital artist!

That spiderverse piece 👌 plus you add a cat to anything i will automatically love it. I don't do digital art and really enjoy hearing you learning and pushing your skills further

What would be pretty fun is If you'd start making Backgrounds based on some of the Charakters you Made, so you could Talk about the Charakters lore more, while learning how to Paint Backgrounds! I mean, i would definetly watch it 😃

As a non artist your skill and attention to detail are really impressive and make me want to learn too!

All of these backgrounds are so pretty. I'd get them all as prints.

Omg! Thank you for the shout out! You did a fantastic job on the cityscape and all of the colours in the windows too ☺this is such an inspiring video to keep trying things out and pushing yourself as an artist

18:06 don’t think we wouldn’t notice the drawfee reference

it is so humbling drawing a castle wow

I could never put my Pinterest home page and boards on full display on KZfaq in the same video my face is in. You’re so brave

Luz riding king was so cute!!

i would like merch saying ✨fantasy nonsense✨ mushroom mug, sticker, sweater etc.

Omgg those are so gorgeous, I love seeing artists who admit they need to practice, you inspire me to paint and work on my characters, I'd love to see some interior design/backgrounds

Even the greats use references for their masterpieces so doing so is not "cheating " or showing a lack of knowledge/ imagination. I used to get down really hard on myself about using reference photos or drawing inspiration from different sources thinking that "true" artists can see an image in their mind and then create it all on their own. Then I started taking college courses for my art major and I quickly realized that my original idea of art was inherently flawed. The "greats" like Picasso, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Boris Vallejo, Luis Royo, and even the modern digital media "greats" all use references to work from. It is always good to go back to basics when art blocks hit so you or anyone else experiencing it, it's ok, and just like she mentioned in the video art block is just the stage that we all Plateau on before we break through and improve apon our craft. I'm so happy that this is a safe place for us to be open and honest about the ups or downs of our art journeys. 🎨 ❤

aaww.. your spider sona up there is awesome.

Honestly, this is one the most inspiring videos I've seen from your channel so far! I have a very similar taste in background art, especially with cityscapes as a focal point, so the resources are going to be a huge help in the future! On top of that, just listening to you go through the process of practicing and improving over the last couple of videos has really inspired me to go back to practicing more fundamental ideals of art, even when I'm working on full scale pieces! Over all, I had an amazing time joining you on this little practice session, and I hope you find your way out of your art funk soon!

Will have to rewatch this one - the background drawing was so chill and calming that I was put into a calm, semi-hypnotized state. Very sorry for the artblock, but my anxiety thanks you for the relaxing vibes.

Backgrounds are always super challenging but these came out fantastic

This is very inspiring for me, young artist who loves illustrations of backgrounds but definitely struggles with them & with the fact that i need to work on stuff to actually get better at it. Loved the lay out of the video too, thank you for sharing your art !

These look so great! your critiques were really nice to hear too. One thing I want to point out is that your values in that building piece are actually a lot neater than the desaturated image gives it credit for. That bright turquoise you used in the horizon is a lot brighter in value than the grayscale image shows! :o

Everytime i draw my mind just goes blank, like just no thoughts, head empty. Then I come across a great artist, or amazing art pieces - specifically the spider verse ones - and those works motivate me to draw more. But the perfectionist in me makes me doubt my artistic skills so i go back to scrolling mindlessly on my phone. It's definitely annoying, but your video is actually helping me open up my creative mind, maybe because i relate to the art block part a lot. Really loved the pieces you were able to produce, they looked incredibly amazing, especially the castle, and your painting style is really good. It's really important to keep in mind that you'll have to draw wonky before you produce something close to perfect, I believe that every artist should remember this And this is off-topic but I really love the way you speak. I'm not an English speaker but i really like your way of speaking great work 🖤💫

I love this! Very inspiring!!! If you ever feel the slightest want to do another environment/landscape/backgrounf etc focused video, i will be there metaphorically foaming at the mouth for anything like that!

The first building you drew actually has a 1 point perspective, right in the middle behind the central building =) It is funny cuz I envy your ability to draw such fluid characters and I am a drafter who has been drawing square buildings for far too long... lol

I've been getting a lot of tips and advice from art communities, especially when I see that others utilize forms and lines, or just shapes to be able to picture your landscapes. Observational drawing can be good, but it's better if you can apply what you remember, and then make a twist out of it.

I wonder what your cityscapes would look like slightly animated

Once again the queen has posted a banger❤

I tend to avoid backgrounds quite easily because I use watercolour and can just blendy blend 😂

Hello! Excellent video as always ^^ your skill and speed at these backgrounds is really inspiring and now i want to try some too! You mentioned not being sure of how to fix the range of greens in the treehouse piece and I have a suggestion. I believe that the hues are less planned out than they could be. You definitely used a good range of yellow green all the way to blue greens and even full blue, but I think the arrangement of them could be made a bit more purposeful. For example, with the atmospheric perspective, as I'm sure you know things further away tend to be a bit more blue tinted and less saturated, whereas those closest to the viewer keep their more vibrant tones. Yellow is lost first, then red, so if the main focus of the warmer tones is near the foreground and the greens get cooler as they go back it could help with the depth and clarity that you seemed to be missing when you mentioned the lack of distance. Since you did use cooler hues in the foreground for this particular piece, you could also do a stylized reversal of this where the furthest parts would still be less saturated but also stick with that warmer colour, as if the atmospheric perspective is created by the sunlight bouncing off the particles in the air instead. Since the overall look is a warm afternoon/evening closer to golden hour than a bright blue midday I think it would work nicely as well ^^ For the second and third pieces you incorporated the brushes really well! That can be really tricky so excellent work ^^ (gasped for joy when you added the rain in the spiderverse piece. The VIBES ARE IMMACULATE and we are thriving) Do you tend to flip your canvas? I do it all the time especially in the sketching. It can really help your eye find those little "off" things that may not stand out enough to know what's wrong without a fresh *perspective* hehe Such a fantastic video, Thank you so much for sharing your studies and process!!! (enjoy your meal concept got me diving into the comments liking everyone that pointed it out, love from a fellow drawfreak!!!)

You can try to add light blue gradient that start from the bottom of distant object to give atmosphere or fog effect, it will start to show depth on your arts.👍

Kira this video is amazingly helpful, not only the process, but the resources and the commentary, as an artist this is one of my favorite videos in the internet

Wow!!! These studys are so gorgeous. It can def be hard to pick good refs without getting overwhelmed by all the options, but you really brought the magic out of the images you chose!

hey! even though im not an expert, for the treehouse composition that you did, i think that the main focus is on the three characters and not on the treehouse itself. the way that i would fix it is that i would move the treehouse and the characters more to the left, so that the tree is more visible and the characters are kind of hidden by the trees in the foreground. hope that helps! also great video and all in all those were great studies!!

Best thing to watch while doing the worm

The volcano one is really cool! I've never done digital art, outside of sketching with a tablet, so this is fascinating to watch (it seems so arcane 😅)

Plz try background studies on real paper!! I'll be so happy then. Btw your so talented:)

for the volcano piece i initially thought they were escaping the volcanos erupting. the lava by their feet didn’t make sense, its super interesting to see your process tho but i think something to try would be doing multiple greyscale thumbnails and creating a story for each that reflects real world events/dynamics since that’s what we base art off of anyways! can’t wait to see more of your process vids ❤️

THIS IS SO PERFECT TIMING!! I’ve been planning to focus on environment painting this summer! TYY

Your backgrounds are looking gorgeous and I relate to your art journey a lot

Wooooooooo! Spider sona!!!

I loved watching this on my break between studying during my college's final season. Keep up the great work!

Hey just wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed this video concept and definitely wouldn’t mind seeing more of it in the future!

I LOVE airbrush and will stand by it. Lol.

spiderverse one was fantastic :o. amazing.

I'm currently forcing myself to ONLY learn the basics of realistic drawing until I allow myself to draw my ideas bc otherwise I just won't get better bc I've never fully learnt drawing realistic which made my art suck and made me feel bad about it so I'm doing this for my own good kinda

1:23 off topic, But that Owl House piece is DOPE. Love seeing king as a big boy 😊

i really enjoyed this meal concept, Keira

I feel like this is exactly what I need to do right now Your videos always give me so much motivation to draw and improve

I have no idea who you are this popped up in my feed and I'm happy i watched this, i really liked the study to critique than into fun art. Just really fun vibes

i absolutely LOVE every piece you did!! especially the castle/city-escape piece 😍

I super love this video since I LOVE doing landscape and background art, more on nature, it’s definitely my comfort art. Though I get you in cityscape/architectural art even though I do it on the daily since I’m an architecture student so im crying, kicking and screaming to get through it all. The advice I have learned as a student in terms of emphasizing that distance between objects is keeping the balance of the foreground, mid ground and background. I was taught to tint (more to sky’s colors) & less detail (since the focus was on drawing the main building I was case studying and everything else was to paint a picture of the surrounding environment the architecture was located in, so I had to learn how to keep it vague) the background, putting more detail on the mid ground (or your focal point), and then again with less detail but darkening the foreground. I definitely see that in the beginning in the thumbnail sketch and putting all the values but it gets lost as soon as you started putting in more of the details and colors. Overall, you’ve got most of it down so you’re on the right track on improving and I feel very inspired to do more with my art (even ones I have to do for school ;w;). Thank you for this video, I didn’t know I needed this until now. ^^

Love Devin Elle Kurtz!!! Super happy to learn that you use their brushes

This is so comforting! I have been drawing for awhile now (nowhere near professional) but I have been pretty art blocked, it’s like “Yeah, I can draw, but I could probably draw this better” and with art deadlines coming up my art frustration from lack of fundamental practice is getting to me. In total, nice to see I’m not alone in the never ending process that is art

I can’t believe from a few shape blocks I could tell the treehouse piece had the monster kids in them

23:30 To fix the distance issue, the trees in the WAAAYYY back, like on the horizon, should be way more LIGHT blue (they're like a vibrant light green.) This will at least draw the eye to the base of the tree where the swing is. You might want to try either graying down, or taking out some of the detail of the trees in the up close foreground. Or de-contrast them and take out a stick/thin trunk or two on either side. I like your use of contrasting colors (the overall subtle red and vibrant greens, some yellow/purple accents, and also the blue/orange accents.) It's a very cute piece, and hopefully that helps! And I like the fence kitty!

With the tree house my personal recommendation, which kindly take it with a grain of salt cause I have 0 understanding of color theory or perspective, I'm a idiot, BUT. I noticed that the my eyes were drawn to the treehouse pretty consistently until you started sharpening up and detailing the trees in the foreground, I found it hard to focus on the treehouse afterwards, I think if you possibly made it less detailed and a little less saturated that the eye would fall on the tree house as the focus point more consistently, as well as if you brightened up the hues on the house a bit more, the colors are really really pretty but they lacked in definition, the house felt a bit more abstract compared to the surrounding trees. Hopefully my recommendations make sense? These are things I struggle with myself so I could absolutely be making up nonsense in my brain

Awesome video! I have been struggling with painting backgrounds, shadows, and highlights on Procreate. I am a beginner and I am used to drawing traditional art, but looking back to your old videos for tutorials how to paint shadows, highlights, and don’t over blend the shadows. I have learned everything from your videos and they were very helpful. I would love to learn more about this video because the way you explained about painting background is really interesting and it helps me to understand and not confusing. Much respect thank you for sharing this Kira and keep it up the good work.

Something that really helped me with environments/backgrounds was watercolor. Watercolor is all about layering, You can see every color you put down. I always struggled with environments but with watercolor, Its my favorite part lol

oh my gosh dude ur art is so inspiring i was just trying to learn backgrounds and was starting to loose motivation im really bad at them also im just not satisfied with my art in general recently this videos helping me gain the inspo and motovation to keep trying, thanks!

Love all these pieces, your color choices are just so *juicy*. I will say something in me was screeching that the volcanoes needed to be darker, I think it would give a little more depth? Now to go force myself back to fundamentals 😅

I personally love all the outcomes and just wanted to tell you that you inspired me to go out and do some plain air painting today :)

Seems in both drawing buildings and creating buildings, laying a good foundation is essential : )

Tbh I like the castle most. It looks the most handmade and has the largest example of your true skill _because_ it's the hardest one!! Like I don't think you realize how hard most people would face plant (like me) if they attempted that bahaha

New viewer here! It’s very inspiring and helpful to watch you break down your pieces and what you were trying to improve on. For the treehouse piece, I think adding those trees in the far background messed up toe composition. Before, you had a white space around the treehouse that led your eye to it, while separating it from the foreground trees. Even just lowering the opacity on the farthest background trees would’ve helped.

the way you just breakdown the backgrounds is so MWA like watching the pieces come together was so satisfying, i wish i could paint backgrounds like you

Devin is awesome! I already use some of her brushpacks, and I love them a lot! I'll definitely be buying the cityscape brushes, too!

I love this spidey-city, it gorgeous

i loved all of these backgrounds so much! its so hard to grasp that they're beginnings for you... but man I hope i can get to a point where i'd make something of similar caliber and think it's not enough (if that makes sense). one little note that i had as someone who read into things a lot: for the volcanic castle islands (the volcastle islands, if you will) image, the character holding the torch facing the right side of the screen seems to communicate more of a feeling of 'discovery' and gives an implication of them heading toward the island. since you said they're escaping, i'd probably have them face the opposite direction, so it gives more of an immediate indication of them turning their backs on it, so to speak. obv, i'm not the most knowledgeable, so take what i say with a grain of salt, but i always like to give people an insight into certain ways tiny details might be interpreted, if even just by my own brain

Subscribing for that good good ai critique! (And as motivation to also practice backgrounds this week) HUMAN MADE ART FOREVER!!!!

this is so good its hard to watch. it eats up my confidence as an artist

I love this type of video thank you for showing your process!! I really want to work on my backgrounds but I’m so intimidated especially not knowing much about anything other than drawing everything by hand. You really turned up at the end there lol

Love seeing your process ❤

These are so beautiful!!❤❤❤

Wait only 2 days later after an amazing video we get another one!!!

Thank you so much for this video! I love your art videos that are informative and have tutorials! They turned out so beautiful!

super motivating to see you practicing!

I think these looks great!

I love your videos it all ways helps me gain creativity

Very cool video, and super proud of you for practicing stuff you struggle with. Thank you for sharing the process with us!

one of my favorite ways to practice this kind of thing is taking screenshots of shows/movies i'm watching with interesting lighting/composition then using those as the reference