Doing enviroments?

[pagedown]

At the moment I am doing life drawing with models to develop an eye. I have been doing for about a month now and I can see a lot of overnight improvement with doing people, gestures and flow. But it seems a lot of the things I draw kind of float in space and are not exactly planted on the ground. And a lot of times when I am curled up with a book, I get hit with many ideas about mood, atmospheres, environments and architecture, but when I translate them to paper they get ruined. I was wondering how does a beginner improve his or her skills in environmentalism through the digital medium?

[Basil]

recycle :)

seriously though, you can learn a lot by drawing/painting environments from life and from photos. if you do photos, pay attention to the perspective and draw through the shapes so you don't just copy the outlines. also, it helps a lot to look through paintings by master artists like craig mullins, sargent or any of the hudson river school.

when you're drawing models, it may help to sketch the plane they are standing on and even throw in a few perspective lines after you finish the gesture. hope that helps!