Found a layer trick that saved me 3 hours on my latest piece

I was working on a big character illustration last week and kept messing up the shading layers. Felt like I was starting over every 20 minutes. Then I tried locking the transparent pixels on my base color layer and just painted the shadows directly on top. No more clipping masks or going back to fix edges. Has anyone else tried this shortcut and found it cuts down your cleanup time?

2 comments

2 Comments

clark.robin10d ago

Used to swear by clipping masks for everything. Thought locking transparent pixels was just a messy way to work. Tried it on a sketchy forest scene where the leaves kept bleeding over and it saved me so much cleanup time. Now I use it for all my base shading.

nina_jenkins10d ago

Oh man, I gotta disagree hard. Locking pixels always feels like a trap for me, I end up fighting the layer way more than just using a clip mask when I need tweaks later.