After a year of focusing specifically on environment painting I want to document what I learned, because environment work has different demands from character work and the techniques don't always transfer.

The biggest shift: thinking in planes rather than objects. A forest isn't trees — it's a distant plane of massed foliage, a mid-plane of individual tree forms, and a close plane of specific branches and leaves. Each plane has its own level of detail, color saturation, and edge quality.

The second shift: designing the path of light before painting anything. Where does the light come from? What surfaces does it hit? Where are the occlusion shadows (areas where light can't reach because of geometry)? A light map drawn before painting prevents the 'everything is lit the same' problem.

The third shift: atmospheric haze as a depth cue. The further something is, the more atmosphere is between you and it, the more it shifts toward the sky color. This effect is physically real and visually powerful.