Illustration Teardowns: Background Details

We’ve looked at the big picture in Layouts, and purposeful details in Focal Point. Let’s discuss adding details that don’t get in the way or detract from our overall composition…

illustration by Rob Levin

Please note that all illustrations hereinafter, unless stated otherwise, are the express work of the artist I’m reviewing; I do not take any credit for their works! You can click on the images to visit the artist’s site!

There’s a finesse to creating a composition that has just enough contrast to remain harmonious, and just the right balance of visual weight to not detract from the focal area. Obviously, things like color, size, shape and details are themselves attention grabbers. So, if we’re trying to skillfully direct our viewer’s eyes to the focal point, it makes intuitive sense to put all the details there right? Well, sort of, but, we can also get away with adding some nuanced details in other places like the background if we can somehow mute those details. We can do so with the purposeful use of less contrast, desaturated color, or shapes that are similar and blend in. Sometimes we can even do it boldly with unapologetic use of color. In the end, this sort of background detail can bring a bit of extra interest to the final illustration without overpowered the main focus. Let’s look at some examples…

Tom Haugomat—Carnets souvenirs “Rando”—specifically, notice the muted tree branches along the mountainside.

The tree branches along side the mountains have purposely low contrast to and sort of blend in to to the mountains. Ostensibly, this is done to take preventative measure and not draw your eyes away from the focal area (the figures of course).

Emiliano Ponzi illustration for The New Yorker—The Brooklyn Barge

Emiliano Ponzi—illustration for The New Yorker’s Extreme City

In the above two illustrations, the cityscapes nicely support the focal scenes without taking our attention away or distracting. In the first illustration, the cityscape is a straight up silhouette. In the second, we see more interesting colors and details—and, in fact, the girl is even in shadow. But, there’s an interesting convergence as the building have vertical lines leading back down towards the figure. Also, figure and cityscape form a “T” if you look closely.

You might also want to check out a recent commission Emiliano did for the the Great New York Subway Map as well.

Paulo D. Campos—the blue swirls pop, but don’t take away from the focal point. Nor do the leaves of brown and reds. Perhaps it’s the use of repetitive patterns and monochromatic sections that make it work so well. Oh and it’s using that Dutch Tilt we talked about in the Noir teardown

Another Paulo D. Campos illustration just because it’s so beautiful. Although I wouldn’t call the details subdued, he’s still pulling off a lot of detail without detracting from the overall story—why do you think it’s all coming together? Color? Grouping of shapes?

Sarah Wilkins For XXI — Double Life

Again, we have a muted cityscape—this one has lively colors and dot-like squares for the windows—it seems like the use of scale pushes them far enough in to the background (along with the door shape that conveniently separates them), that they don’t detract from the focal point. Also, the horizontal lines created by some of the windows converge inward.

Kjetil Sandvand—a beautiful illustration apparently done on an iPad Pro with Procreate

The uniformity of the directional lines and sections of monochrome allow a lot of detail without detracting from the focal silhouette. Again, we can argue they act as convergence lines leading the eye to the silhouette figure.

Sebastien Pelon

The monochromatic cityscape adds nice line and shape interest without detraction, while the red trees sit in the middle ground and nicely push the focal area forward in this lovely illustration by Sebastien Pelon. Here’s another illustration of Sebastien’s which uses background details beautifully:

Sebastien Pelon—click on this to visit Sebastien’s shop (no affiliation)

I’m calling these details (because of the amount of line work), but the elements themselves are in fact simplified.

Sebastien Pelon — the trees are a gorgeous muted detail with their various silhouette shapes

Related to my post about shorthands, the background tree silhouettes here are nice example of shorthand giving a nice read with little effort. The atmospheric perspective of background trees, cityscapes, etc., will always allow the artist to have the option to use muted colors that recede.

Taku Bannai—Cover “Pen” magazine

Again we have a cityscape that’s got plenty of details and popping colors, yet the foreground focal point is clear and in your face. Also again, we have a nice use of continuation between the C-curve road the leads in to the tallest skyscraper building. This also leads to a sort of secondary focal point, the figure in yellow in some sort of personal hellicopter thingy, adding to the suspension of disbelief in this fantastical futuristic scene.

Jeff Östberg for The New Yorker Magazine

There’s a lot going on behind our focal figure, but you definitely zoom in on the figure and the sheets of music. The mostly muted colors are done strategically with only tinges of popping colors like red and yellows.

Ryo Takemasa uses gorgeous texture here: but notice the background cityscape and trees are quite simplified thus allowing his figure to sit in the mid-ground with help from the slightest hints of red and yellow

YuLong LLI for Starbucks

I decided to toss this one in here to play devil’s advocate—how the heck are all those unapologetic colors working so well overall? First I’d say that if you look closely, it’s mostly the three primary colors (red, yellow, blue) so the scheme is a known one to work…triadic. But, I also believe this overall illustration is a prime example of what design textbook Design Basics calls Emphasizing The Whole Composition:

A definite focal point is not a necessity in creating a successful design…an artist may wish to emphasize the entire surface of a composition over any individual elements.

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing how these amazing artists have managed to incorporate a lot of background details in to their works without detracting from an impactful story and focal point!

Previous in series: French Illustrators. Next in series: Japanese Illustrators.

Rob Levin is a freelance illustrator. Portfolio: https://roblevin.myportfolio.com/ For illustration work enquiries, collaboration, or to say hi: roblevinillustration@gmail.com.

Also, you may like to read more of the illustration teardowns articles.