Thinking in Layers

On Tuesday, I got a phone call from my good friend Katie. We didn't have much to catch up on, since nothing much has been happening, but we talked for a bit how we understand our favorite mediums. Katie is an oil painter, and she's fond of painting still lives and pretty scenes. She recently completed a master copy of a sunflower painting by Daniel Keys, and she was telling me about how it changed her process of color mixing. Her tendency, according to her, is to mix her colors into more neutral tones, and her goal is to use more pure pigment and inject some vibrancy into her work.

I cannot paint. I've taken multiple painting classes -- I've had limited success with acrylic and watercolor, but oil painting makes me want to stab myself in the eye. My alma mater places a TON of stock on classical art forms, and it was very frustrating to understand how painting works theoretically, but not be able to do it. I tend to think of it like a backflip -- I understand the physics of a backflip, but if you put a gun to my head and told me to do a backflip, I'd probably just have to die.

HOW DO TRADITIONAL ARTISTS THINK?

Katie thrives on traditional art forms. She'll tell you herself that she hates computers, and she'd rather be up to her elbows in paint. Her thought process, as a result, has to be deliberate and methodical. She's familiar with what it takes to fix a problem in a traditional art form. If your drawing isn't good, you have to erase it and redraw it. If your colors aren't right, then you have to remix them. If a spot in your painting just isn't working, you have to scrape all the paint off and start fresh. Katie is, without doubt, a very logical person, but her logic applies onto a flat canvas. She doesn't work in layers. You could compare her work to a puzzle; the pieces all fit together, but they don't overlap.

Traditional art forms take time. Technically, all art forms require time, but from my experience, traditional art forms require far more time and deliberate thought, and obviously require physical interaction with the product. You slap paint on a canvas, mold a sculpture, and blend out your charcoal powder. It gets on your clothes and in your hair and in the carpet, and sometimes in your digestive system if you drink your paint water by accident.

HOW DO DIGITAL ARTISTS THINK?

I am a digital artist. If I'm not working via a screen, I'm not all that excited about it. I love digital illustration and book layout. The biggest advantage of digital art (at least I see it as an advantage) is that you're able to work in layers. If you're at all familiar with digital painting or any programs that create static images, then you'll know that they give you the ability to work in layers, with multiple blending modes, group functionalities, and masking options. Speaking purely in technicalities, there are MANY more components to digital art than there are to traditional art. There's a lot of functionality that you have to understand and be familiar with/comfortable with using.

During our conversation, I realized the key difference between traditional and digital artists: digital artists think in layers. Wow, groundbreaking. Congratulations! Here's a gold medal for the obvious. I know, it sounds elementary, but hear me out.

WHY CERTAIN ART FORMS MAKE MORE SENSE TO YOU

Suddenly, it made sense. That was why all the traditional art forms never clicked! I never seemed to break through the barriers of painting and drawing. I knew how to paint and draw, but fixing paintings or drawings was so slow and difficult that I inevitably lost interest after hour two (geez, how did I ever graduate?). I was tired of mixing colors and waiting for them to dry, only to have to change them AGAIN. I was sick of erasing a line and redrawing it until it was right. To me, it made more sense to use the paint bucket and color-drop into the wrong color to correct it, or to select an area of a drawing and move/resize it until it was right.

When I paint digitally, I work in layers. Instead of looking at a reference image and color picking exactly the right color, I follow a certain, semi-rigid process that involves thinking in layers, both digitally and mentally. I'll break down the process. For sake of clarity, I've formatted it this way: #) Mental mode (blending mode). These steps all stack and clip on top of each other, starting from sketch and ending with direct light.

HOW TO THINK IN LAYERS

1) Sketch (Normal)

In order to be good at any other medium, you have to be good at drawing. If your drawing isn't good, you'll have trouble making anything else look right. When I sketch, I usually use black on the normal blending mode, though you could really use any color you like.

2) Base colors (Normal)

The first step for color in my brain is to choose the base color of something. This is how most people think that aren't "artists". My shirt is gray. My socks are black. The flowers are purple. In your daily life, you don't look at a blue water bottle and say "oh technically this is not blue in this lighting". You know it's a blue water bottle. I'll patch in the base colors for everything, on the normal blending mode.

3) Shadow (Multiply)

Color is drastically affected by lighting schemes. Once I decided on the lighting scheme I planned to use, I choose an appropriate shadow color and patch it in where shadows WOULD fall, on the multiply blending mode. (I could go on a long rant on color theory and the use of multiply as a blending mode, but I'll save you the headache.)

4) General light (Overlay)

Technically, there's no "right" order of whether or not you should add shadows or lighting first; I just find it easier to put shadows first and light second. I'll choose an appropriate lighting color and patch it in on the overlay blending mode, where it makes sense for light to fall on the subject.

5) Direct light (Add)

There's a difference between diffused and direct light; you'll see diffused general light on a cloudy day, but you'll see direct light on a sunny day. The clearest example of direct light is rim light, when the subject is backlit and they have a pseudo-corona of color around them. You will always deal with general light, but you will not always deal with direct light.

DO YOU THINK IN LAYERS?

If that all sounds wildly complicated to you, you're not alone! Many people don't think this way. But if that all made at least a little sense, there's a chance you have a propensity to digital art, whether digital painting or graphic design. You could, in theory, paint on one layer like you paint on a physical canvas, and select colors in the same way you would mix them on a palette. But if you think like me, the odds are high that digital painting (in layers!) will make more sense to you.

When thinking in layers, you don't think of the piece as a whole; you think of each individual part. You think of the base color, and then placing a shadow on it, and then placing a light cast on it. You think of the color of the skin, and then place a blush tone over it. You think of a leaf and a light source as two completely separate things -- you paint the leaf, and then you paint the light falling on it. This is the key difference between digital and traditional art. You have to think of all these things at the same time when working traditionally. But when working digitally, you can easily change the angle or temperature of the light source, and any number of variables. You can explore more, and faster.

There's a lot more to digital painting than mental and layer blending modes. There are brush blending modes, clipping masks, adjustment layers, selection and distortion... the tools are FAR more diverse, and require a lot of experimentation and fundamental understanding. But if you understand your tools, you'll get more done, and faster. Digital art is ideal for me because I'm a very fast person. I think, learn, read, eat, write, shower, draw, and paint fast. I hate to spend more than a couple hours on something. I also am the type to have to churn out a ton of bad work before I can get to the good stuff, so digital art gets me there faster.

One final word: DIGITAL ART ISN'T CHEATING! You just have more tools at your disposal. If you take the time to understand how to use them and use them correctly, it requires just as much discipline and knowledge as it would to squint at your source image and mix exactly the right color. So take heart, aspiring digital artists! You're just as much of an artist as the guy painting forty hours a day.