Olivia Background Progress

For my Olivia Animation background 

This was my original rough draft concept:

The i took my draft and cleaned it up, I found the wall especially, lacked depth, so to all the objects and planks I added highlights and shadows.

After I had done this I got some feedback from my teacher and some students saying that we couldn't see that the door was actually a door, Therefore i decided to add some angles to the door and also tried to give my background a bit more texture. 

As this was my first real painting with Photoshop, I found it quite hard to get the highlights and shadows correct especially on the glass, I was worried that I would have to paint Olivia's reflection on it. I looked up a lot of tutorials on how to draw different materials. 

I wasnt happy with this background, The light was a pain to get right and the shadows near the light were also a nightmare. So i decided to start painting again.

This is a progress picture of my painting before it reached its final stage. I was intent on having a lot of texture and to make it look less like it was out of a cartoon. My teacher told me i had to be more careful especially with metal and how you draw it (the door knob) because the lines had to be extremely straight. I looked up metal door knobs and tried to understand how the highlights and shadows worked so that i could apply it to my painting. 

This is my final background. It took me a long long time to draw the wood and i felt like giving up because looking at it close up all day made me think it didn't even look like wood anymore. But i continued and ended up with a kind of wood looking texture. I enjoyed painting the candles most of all.