Layers in digital painting: a beginner guide

A layer is a transparent sheet of glass laid over your painting. You paint on the glass, not on the picture, so you can move it, hide it, or paint over it without touching what is underneath. Once you picture it that way, most of the mystery around digital painting disappears.

Three layers are enough to start

You do not need twenty layers. For almost any picture you will paint, this setup works:

1. Sketch. A rough drawing in a thin, dark color. This is the layer you are allowed to be wrong on.
2. Color. A layer above the sketch where the main shapes get their color.
3. Light. A layer on top for highlights, glazes and small details.

With that order, every stroke has a purpose and you can still change your mind about the drawing, because the sketch is one layer below and can be moved, faded or hidden.

The two settings that matter

Each layer has an opacity, which is how much of what is underneath shows through, and a blend mode, which is how it mixes with what is below.

For beginners, the useful part is simpler than the menu suggests:

• Normal is what you use most of the time.
• Multiply darkens what is below. It is how you paint shadows that feel like they are inside the shape, not on top of it.
• Screen lightens. It is the fastest way to add a glow without painting over everything.
• Overlay keeps the contrast of both layers, which is useful for texture.

You can get very far with Normal and Multiply. The layers chapter walks through the whole set with pictures.

A practical recipe for depth

1. Fill the background layer with a flat mid tone.
2. On a new layer, paint the darkest areas only. Keep that layer on Multiply so the background shows through the shadows.
3. On another layer, add the light areas with Screen.
4. Step back. If the picture looks flat, the shadows are not dark enough or not close enough to the shapes. If it looks dirty, you are probably painting the light on top of the shadow instead of beside it.

That last check is the one that fixes most flat digital paintings: light and shadow should not overlap, they should sit next to each other.

Why beginners avoid layers and should not

Layers feel like extra work, and they are, for the first hour. After that they are the reason you can experiment. Without them, a bad stroke is a ruined painting. With them, a bad stroke is one layer you can hide and redo.

If you want a place to practice without consequences, RobinPad keeps your work on your own device, so experimenting costs you nothing but time.