Improve your Backgrounds! It’s

Backgrounds are that aspect of art that many artists dread. I know I did. It was mainly due to me having no idea how to fill up space in a believable way. My cityscapes were so boring, and I hated looking at them. Then when I did use reference, I struggled to find interesting pictures. I'd look for hours and hardly find anything useable. The best thing to do was to just go out and snap photos of places I thought were cool... but who's got the time to do that. Photographers, sure. But not me. If you look at the above pages, you see that I filled the small spaces behind the characters with a grungy cityscape. I didn't need to, but I truly felt it added to the environment. Now you as the reader can tell it's a cold winter in a run down part of the city. This time I didn't even have to do much searching. But before I tell you my new trick, look at these few pages below, one from Bleach (Tite Kubo) and the other from Vagabond ( Takehiko Inoue).

There's no denying the hype around Bleach and its massive following. However, as an art piece, the manga falls short. Many can fight for the stylistic choices made, and a point can be made for the large use of empty space, but it isn't a crazy thing to say that some of these pages are kinda... well, boring.

On the other hand, a manga like Vagabond truly pushes the use of background elements. At no time as a reader will you be confused at where the characters are in relation to another. The backgrounds not only add to the visual experience, but add to the story and symbolism.

Now, to my little sneaky tip and how I came across it. My girlfriend was browsing through homes in Toronto. She was using Google streetview and I instantly noticed the wide array of interesting backgrounds. We walked through the alleys and backroads and I was shook. How did I not think of this sooner. Why leave the comfort of my home to find all these cool references for my work when I can just sit on my ass and scroll through the streets using Google! So that's it. Streetview. Wanna draw backgrounds and don't want to google search images or use Pinterest, then here's the better method. I know it's really simple and some of you may already use this method but I honestly thought it was the coolest little thing. I'll share some awesome city shots I got from Toronto that you can use for your own city environment drawings! Anyways, peace out!