Sometimes, especially when you are working in a simple style with a limited palette, you run into problems: you want to put a thing in front of something the same color, and have it still read.
Like this lady, who I drew in the same palette I used for Decrypting Rita, as an example for someone who was asking this sort of question.
Well. What I like to do is to make a new layer between the subject and background, and splatter in some shapes that create contrast around part of the subject. Once the composition works, then turn them into part of the background:
Blam, now she pops off the background. There’s still some ambiguity, I could add some more shadows to her body and clear up the arms some:
…and doodle in some other details, and I could just keep going with adding stuff here but I spent about a half an hour on this so far and it’s probably good enough to make my point.
well okay I can have a little a screentone on the background as a treat I guess
and a few more minutes touching up the city background I drew and deleted in the first version of this post
Would it have been out of character to use a gradient for that sky color?
I like that screentone, like someone has actually looked at and seen that kind of cloud.
Yeah, I was working under the rules I set for “Decrypting Rita” here, which were pretty firm about “no gradients/transparency” until I broke the hell out of them for the last chapter. :)