Is It Possible To...

[Kieran]

Hey everyone, new member here, first post actually. (: I'm quite new to art rage, even to digital art in fact!

I've just started a very large project for a friend of mine, it's a very cartoony style and I was playing around with a few things when I discovered the blur layer tool, I popped it on to see what it'd look like and awesome, it's just smoothed out all of my lines and added most of my shadows/highlights!

I'm very happy with the first character so far and I think the second will be even better but when I've come down to the background I'm in a pickle because all those lovely highlights of mine are transparent, is there any way I can keep them without having to brush them in myself whilst having a coloured background? The character is in the air and there are blues/greens behind him and green highlights look strange!

Thank you everybody (:

[D Akey]

Well, not knowing exactly what your art looks like (ie how much of the page is covered with "paint" or color) --

-- IF your picture is only transparent for the highlights, you can make a new layer under the one with all your good work on it, (it will probably appear on a layer above, but just drag it under in the Layers Palette), and you can fill it with white.

-- OR you can make the new layer and broad stroke it generally under where the highlights are thus leaving the other areas of the background clear to be painted on -- on yet another separate layer below.

Once you have the concept of how it works, it should be easy for you thereafter to use layers for all kinds of stuff. This time it's a band-aid. Next time it's for massive effects or mats with scratches (or who knows what).

Layers are God's own art creation tool. If there is stuff on separate layers in your pic, you can adjust them infinitely because they're isolated already and it's there for you to play with to taste on the fly after the fact (tweak colors, adjust transparency etc etc etc). And of course, that's just a bit of how they can be used.

Have fun with it.

Oh, and welcome!

[Kieran]

Hey thank you for your ideas! I'm starting to get to grips with the program a little bit better now, I was previously only using about 2 or 3 of the tools but after experimenting with my own side projects in my own time I'm starting to get a much better idea of how the tools work and what they do, how to use them and how important layers are! I posted some of my artworks from today in the gallery, I'd be grateful if you could leave your comments there and let me know how I'm getting on and what techniques I could use to make my pieces better!

Thank you! (: