USING LAYERS IN DIGITAL PAINTINGS - How to improve artwork with layers

The defining feature that makes digital painting superior over physical painting is layering. This article will show you how using layers will efficiently and easily improve your artwork, taking you through it step by step and layer by layer.








This tutorial will give you tips on layers, brushes, sketching and drawing techniques using a particular drawing style (see above picture). If you want to learn how to draw with a product / industrial design style then see this tutorial.

Canvas & Sketch layer - The very bottom layer is simply a white fill. This ensures the artwork will not have any transparency which could be a problem when saving it as a JPEG.
It is very important that all of your layers have a transparent background. Otherwise with a coloured background it would cover all of the layers below it- we don't want to do this!

I then made a new layer and sketched out the basic design of my robot. It is best to work out all of the details and parts of your robot now so that you have a reference when adding colour. Make sure to determine your perspective and light sources. Click here to see a tutorial if you don't know how to do this.

Robot skeleton layer - I roughly shaded in some base colour for the skeleton of the robot. This layer is below the layer that I will draw the robot's outer shell on. Think of the robot in a physical sense- the skeleton would be below the outer shell, so make your layers in the same order.

Outer shell layer - Still using the sketch for reference, I coloured in the outer shell of the robot. I added some basic shading and highlighting to the outer shell...
Because I have the skeleton and outer shell on different layers, I can use the eraser tool to clean up the edges of the outer shell without erasing the skeleton.

Shading and highlights layer - I then made a layer above the outer shell layer (and hid the sketch layer as I don't need it anymore). This layer is for adding shading and highlights to the sketch. I thought the shading and highlights were weak and did not 'pop' enough. To solve this issue I simply duplicated the layer which in turn doubles the strength of the layer, thus giving it darker shading/ lighter highlights.

 Shadows layer - The shadows layer goes below all layers of the robot and is only above the canvas and background layers. An easy way to make shadows is to select a silhouette of the robot and fill it in grey. Then skew and rotate the silhouette so that it follows the line of perspective.

Skeleton details layer - I made a layer just above the robot skeleton layer to add in detail to the skeleton. I used this layer to add details, highlights and shadows to the skeleton.

Light source highlights layer - I decided to add a strong highlight of colour to suggest that there is a coloured light source shining onto the robot. This will add another dynamic to the artwork and help unify everything. Remember that the brush can go past the edges of the robot- just use the eraser tool to erase the unwanted brush strokes back to the edges.

A great thing about using layers is that I can change the opacity, colour, brush mode etc. for each individual part of my robot. For example, the red light source highlight was too intense so I dulled it down to a nice pink colour by removing the blue and green colour channels. Have a play with each layer. Tweak them until they look how you want them to.

Background layer - I added a background layer just above the canvas layer.
I used a textured brush to make the desert ground, applying a brown textured brush first and then white textured bush on top. Then I drew some basic blocks to form a city-scape on the horizon. Then an airbrush was used to apply white and grey smoke in the distance, helping to give the illusion that the city / horizon is far away. Then I added some pink highlights to the sky to match the pink highlights on the robot.

Final adjustments - Lastly, I saved the artwork as a JPEG (to reduce file size and flatten the layers). I then adjusted the brightness / contrast ratio until it looked nice. I also did not like the colour scheme so I changed the hue and shadow / highlight colours to ones I liked. These settings are under 'filter' -> 'adjust'.

Thanks for reading, I hope this article helps. If it did, why not help me by liking or sharing it to your friends. Thanks.