Helpful Tips and Tricks for Illustrating Landscapes

12/04/2025

By Sean Everitt

So I've been working as a background artist for around 2 years now, and it has been an incredibly fun experience. Although it has had some very frustrating moments. I've spent my time constantly trying to improve my art, but I struggled at some points on trying to actually figure out how to do that. So with this article, I hope to share some helpful advice that anyone can take on board to improve their landscape illustrations.

The Basics

Before we get to more specific stuff, it's good to mention the basics, the stuff you've probably heard before, but nonetheless, are incredibly helpful. And to start, practice, practice, and practice. As daunting as constant practice is, it is vital to improving your art. Everytime you draw or use a technique, you learn just a little bit, and over time, it all adds up. After a year, you'll notice yourself being much more comfortable with your techniques, and being able to achieve much more advanced stuff with them.

So how should you practice, well I find that there are many different techniques that work, and some work better for different people than for others. I often just get a page, divide it into sections, and simply draw out different things in each one. Like testing out different drawing methods for shading on the same object, or learning how to draw more unique plants. So I think it's best that you look towards your fellow artists and see how they practice their art and test out if that technique works for you.

Now that you have a method, you should figure out what you want to learn. At the start, I struggled to come up with things I wanted to practice, so a great method to get around this, is to list out what you want to achieve. I love drawing nature and adding wildlife to my backgrounds, but I didn't think my tree drawing abilities were at a professional standard. So I simply listed different types of trees, and since I have a preference for cartoon styles, I found a few different ones and practiced. What I did, was essentially figure out what kind of things I wanted to draw, and how I wanted to draw them, so I laser-focused on those specific things. So if you can figure what kind of things you want to do with your art, you can start listing them, and then focus on practice from there.

Now a few things to mention about practice, it is completely alright to fail, that's actually what you want to happen. A lot of drawings and sketches are not going to turn out the way you want them. But this is expected because with each mistake you learn something new, you figure out what kind of things work and what you could practice on. Also, remember to experiment, try new art techniques, and attempt to draw stuff you haven't drawn before. This also applies to materials and tools, whether it's traditional or digital art, experiment with different brushes and tools, and see how they work and what you can get out of them. You might find your new favourite brush yet.

Drawing Natural Scenes

Now that the basics are out the way, it's time to learn how to draw natural scenes. Whether that's gardens, forests, or anything else with plants, you have to be mindful of how things are placed. To get a detailed and natural-looking effect, that also looks good, you basically have to think about how each element interacts together.

Say you're drawing a plant, you have to think about what it's growing out of. If it's in grass, how do the grass blades look next to it, or at its base. You also have to think about its neighbors, whether that's other plants, rocks, trees, or anything else, you have to think about how it interacts with that object. Does the plant's leaves simply mingle with the leaves of a neighboring plant and does it snake like a vine up a wall. By understanding how your plant interacts with its surroundings, not only will your art look more detailed, but it'll also look more interesting.

While it isn't necessary, you can also think about how the plant actually works. How does it grow, and what rules does it follow. Maybe it won't grow near certain things, and will only thrive in specific situations. Maybe one plant would thrive growing in a flower field but struggle to grow wedged in between rocks. It's definitely a fun thing to think about if you love worldbuilding, and it shows how much thought you're putting into your art. You can see some of that in the piece below, where you can see that certain plants are only able to grow in specific locations. Can you guess what rules they follow?

One last bit of advice for drawing natural objects, take the time to practice colours. Plants, flowers, leaves, and so forth, are never often a single colour. So if you can practice making colours blend and mix together effectively, you'll be able to design more interesting stuff. Plus it can be helpful in learning how to do shading.

Designing Interesting Buildings

One of the struggles I've had to deal with is designing buildings. Often times, I found that whenever I drew structures, they often just become boxes with windows and a door, which is boring. So how did I get around this, well yes practice was a big part of it, but references were the saviour here.

I wanted my buildings to feel more alive, and so I basically looked towards the real thing to understand how buildings work. Whether that's through pictures I found online and in books, or just going outside and finding places that look good. So what do have to look out for when learning how to design buildings. Figure out what purpose the building has, why it was built in a certain way, what materials it's made from, what's its history and how does it interact with its surroundings. How does it influence people to act, do they hang around, put up posters and gardens, tag it with graffiti, or is just desolate.

Also take note of the smaller details, such as cracks, wear and tear, stains from water drains, and other forms of aging. Think about how think building gets its power, water, gas, air conditioning, TV signals, and such. This is extra work, but maybe think about what kind of rooms are in the building, and how that influences the shape of the building. Which brings me to my last point, how do people use the building. If it's an apartment, maybe some residents leave windows open and keep decorations or potted plants on the window sills. Or they're anti-social and keep their curtains closed. Or maybe it's an oppressive workplace, designed more like a soul-sucking prison, where no windows can be opened, there's too many security cameras and the outside is kept sterilely clean.

Here in one of my older pieces, you can see elements of these techniques at work. Nowadays I would add some aging elements to the buildings, but here, you can see different considerations. Such as the various pipes and chimmneys giving functionality to the buildings, a bit of culture through the unique roof design and an indication of what the location is like. As seen through the rubbish left around the place, indicating the spot to be an isolated place that no to many people go to.

Ultimately, you just have to figure out how a building works, and how people interact with it. That way, you can start thinking about what kind of details you add, how to structure its shape and design, and how you can use colours and texturing. Also coming back to my point about practice, it's also helpful to thumbnail different designs for a building. You can experiment with different ideas, designs and shapes to really get the best possible design.

Alright, that will be all for this blog, I have plenty of other tips and ticks, so be on the look out for any further articles. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me and I'll be happy to help. Thanks for reading.