What Lies Behind (The Equine)

Often in equine photo manipulation there is a tendency to spend hours of work perfecting the subject of a piece (the horse) and leave the background with little detail or lacking in quality.
Is this because of frustration? Laziness? Or is it simply from not knowing the techniques to put together an interesting and realistic background?
On my part, it is definitely the last. I, for one, have spent way too much time trying to force myself to create something without understanding the foundations of how to do it. Needlessly.
I say that because this community is a wealth of artistic knowledge. DeviantArt is made up of thousands of the world’s most incredible artists and the best part is, many are ready and willing to share their experience.
I don’t think everyone realizes the extent of the information you can learn from the tutorials on DA or even by just chatting up an artist you admire.

Here are some amazing and helpful tutorials on creating intriguing and technically sound backgrounds:

Blending


Coloring:


Textures:


Lighting/Shadows:


Framing:


These are great tutorials that cover all of the basics and more:



Remember that, though these tutorials are aimed at creating nice backgrounds, a carefully constructed background is still extremely reliant on the lighting, blending, etc. of the subject(s) and details added to it.
Also, don’t forget to be creative. These tutorials are meant to be guidelines, not the be-all end-all of photo-manipulation. There are always a hundred ways to do achieve any one effect. See what others do and then build on that and deviate from it to make it your own.

AND, above all else, give some love to the creators of these tutorials. It takes a lot of time, effort, and generosity to put one of these things together. Even after learning from them and putting them to use, I still wouldn’t be able to explain much more than, “Do what looks right.” We all know how helpful that statement is…

Some incredible equine manipulations and their background stocks:




















I hope you can use some of these great resources!