I've been spending some time looking back on old photos lately and feeling a bit nostalgic. So for today, let's talk about how to use colors, filters, and more to get a nostalgic vibe for your illustration with 2 scene demonstrations!

Drawing Nostalgic Scenery

So nostalgic scenery will look different for everyone. Essentially, since nostalgia is just thinking fondly of the past, nostalgic backgrounds are something that are more personal to you. An easy way to get a more nostalgic vibe for yourself is to reference from an old photo that you've taken in the past.

I also feel like when looking back at my old photos, sunset or night scenes are particularly nostalgia evoking, maybe due to the dimmer light and warmer colors.

So for today's drawing demonstration, I'll be drawing a sunset scene and a night scene. So let's start with a sunset scene!

Demo 1: Sunset Scene

I'll finish up a sketch I did and then do the lines in flat colors first. Character wise, I wanted to draw something with the feeling wind blowing through the character's hair and clothes, as well as have a more reminiscent expression to push the mood a little bit more.

While I'm drawing this, I'm also imagining how I want to draw the background or scenery. Since the purpose of the drawing is to evoke a feeling of nostalgia, I'd like the drawing to skew darker and maybe be a bit messier in certain parts. This is because when you look at photos taken in the past, they tend to be less clear than modern photos as cameras evolve.

And also, I think because nostalgia has to do with memory, which becomes less clear over time, I want to go for more ambiguous mood using darker colors, so I'll primarily be using this photo as the reference.

If you're following along, I'd recommend finding an old sunset photo that you've taken or just any photo you'd like. So now I'll go ahead and essentially just redraw the photo while changing some composition elements here and there.

I'll use an airbrush to color in a gradient for the sky, and while you could technically just use the gradient tool, I like using airbrush since it gives me more control over where the colors go. The colors in the sky sort of blend more into each other on the right side compared to the left, so drawing it manually with airbrush works best for me. I’ll also use a dark color to block in the foreground where the character is, and drawn silhouettes of the mountains behind the foreground. I decided to omit the ocean, since I think I like the look of it being in a mountain valley.

Also, when I look at drawings I've done in the past that give off a sort of nostalgic vibe, something that I noticed is the use of warmer colors and darker shadows, particularly ones where the character is backlit or covered by shadows. So to reflect that, I'll pick a gray purplish color, similar to the mountains, that I'll use for the shadow, and then clip that layer over the character and set the layer blending mode to multiply.

Now I'll go ahead and do another multiply layer to add in the rest of the shading for the character itself.

For this piece, I'm mostly just using a hard brush and occasionally lowering the opacity of the color used for the shadow to give it more depth. I also like to select just the area where the skin color is visible, and use a warmer color to keep some of the warmth on the face or skin areas.

I’ll also use my evergreen brush to draw on some trees and foliage. You can download it using the link below!

I do some further adjustments with a layer for highlights and an overlay layer to bring out some of the warmer colors in the center of the image, and particularly around the character's face.

To bring out more of the nostalgic feeling, I want the illustration to kind of imitate an old or shaky camera. To do that, I'll also add a subtle motion blur just to the background. And to further the sort of older camera effect I’ll also render in some Perlin noise on a new layer and set that to multiply.

For a final touch, I'll go ahead and use a dark purple and red airbrush, and just apply that along the edges of the canvas, as well as primarily on the bottom right hand corner, just to imitate a little bit of a light leak to give it the analog photo look.

And with that, we've finished our first demonstration of a sunset scene using darker colors, noise layers, motion blur, and airbrushing to get a light leak effect, we get a drawing that looks like a warm, nostalgic old photo.

Demo 2: Night Scene

But what about a more moody, nostalgic look? Since nostalgia can also be somewhat sad as you think of the past, depending on what sort of moves you want, it also might be appropriate to use cooler colors instead. So now let's draw a cool toned nostalgic night scene!

So, pulling in the photos from above, I'll primarily reference the first photo. I really like the vast and open sky in this photo, and I think it would contrast nicely with the character, so I'll recreate that in the illustration here. I'm drawing the clouds on a separate layer from the base sky layer. That way I can add a little bit of the purplish gradient from the set sun into the sky behind the clouds later.

I'll roughly block in the mountains, and I'm not spending too much time here, since this will all be blurred later. For the water, to save some time, I'm also using the Sea View Brush Set by 500ml on the Clip Studio Assets store, linked below!

Like last time, I'll set the character mostly in a darker shadow, and then while I'm adding shadows to the character, since I feel like there isn't in the foreground to ground the character, I decide to pull up the horizon a little bit and add in some of the black sand from the photo reference for some additional contrast and interest in the background.

And like last time, I’ll set the character mostly in a dark shadow, and on the shadow multiply layer, I'll select a slightly warmer color for the areas where the skin color is visible. I add noise and also add some RGB shift as well.

And with that, we've finished the second demonstration!

Using pretty much the same techniques, but this time focusing on cooler colors in a simpler scene, we get another nostalgic looking illustration.

Thank you for reading, and I hope this was helpful!