It's Great to see an environmental artist
since I main character design I'm not particularly strong on environments.....
but like Feng Zhu said......Character and environmental design are essentially the same, your just painting form!
I'm pretty crappy at critiques soooo....got any tips for environments?
I can only share the things that worked throughout these few months of focusing on environments, and still learning more.
A. PERSPECTIVE
B. NOTAN
A. PERSPECTIVE
When you start understanding how perspective works, it becomes much easier to develop your own scenes. A good video that explains in simple terms what 1/2/3 point perspective is
1,2,3 Point Perspective by Alphonso Dunnn
And if you're interested in books you could check
Ernest Norling Perspective Made Simple
There is also Atmospheric perspective which you can find more info about in this video
Understanding Atmospheric Perspective by Scot Robbertson
B. NOTAN
This is essentially the exercises you keep seeing me repeat above, specifically the dark/white ones. What this allows you to do is find interesting composition/placements that works.
Could also be considered as thumbnail, which is finding ways to make a scene work. You can find more information about Notan here
And of course, the other thing is to do mini-studies of photography/paintings etc. of landscapes, to find out what works, and play around with the piece you're studying from. Even better if you can sketch from real world interaction (plein-air) , but even though I say all of this, I am still learning and slowly applying what I just wrote here. Notan been one of them, and also overall structure of landscapes.
I am still exploring how to make landscapes work/interesting to look at, and what is interesting for me.
If you have any other questions let me know. Will try my best to answer, to the best of my current experience so far.
This was a very interesting post. Thanks a lot for the explanations!
You're welcome @cedricgo
Was originally going for a virtual plein-air but eventually the landscape turned into this.
I love how much dynamic and atmosphere you can create with these simple thumbnails. I think I have to join the club of stealing your exercise 
It's a good club to be in. I had the most fun in years with my art doing Notan.
Welcome aboard to the club @derkodos and awesome @JesterSeraph
Right now I am experimenting/learning more how to continue making the landscapes looking more polished. Not really content where I am at right now.
By polish, do you mean your painting/colouring or your composition?
More like giving a painting its time, working in incremental procses till it get to a more detailed/finished look if that make sense. (Old master landscape paintings, Zhaoming Wu) etc.
So in a sense taking a painting to its max potential then only investing a minimum amount of time in it.
yo......oke I think I have a good critique finally!
soooo, I don't know what's going on with the last bottom half image...
all the others have some sort of perspective but this one I just can't tell
I think I have an Idea of whats going on but It's only a guesstimate
Well that's the core point of this whole exercise, some will make sense, some will make less sense. I just post everything whether its a failure or not. That one I was aiming for aerial perspective, top down view ish, which I failed miserably, ha.
Thanks for your comment though.
That's what I thought it was I just didn't know how to explain the perspective view.....(like birds eye view...well you got the idea across then!
A lot of good studies here. I think Noah Bradley art camp has a environment design course now. Check it out, if you haven't already.
@catapanoart
Thank you for your comment
Was suppose to be a sabbatical day, but when you're waiting for someone you try every means possible to kill time. So pulled up a small A5 notebook and did a sketch, then decided to pull up my phone and experiment drawing with only my finger. (Samsung GT-I9060C , drew on Google Keep)
Will be evaluating what I have been doing for the last 2 weeks tomorrow, and see if I am going to the direction I want.
Free version of a pattern I have been working on
http://bit.ly/2dLqD7q
Can see the full presentation here
https://www.behance.net/gallery/44054803/Sea-Squad-Fish-Pattern-(Free)
@brianhermelijn The link is broken, and typing out manually the the Bit.ly link in the image gives nothing either (I'm pretty sure the link is case sensitive also, so the all caps link wouldn't work anyway).
Just a heads up.
