Using layers in Concept art

[JaimyvS]

Hey everybody,

i've got a question about the use of layers, when all of you are creating concept art do you use seperate layers for sketch/rough sketch and details or do you use seperate layers for different body parts?

And is there some kind of book to learn painting concept art?

[Icecold]

Ho Ho, young Padawan.

Good concept pieces have alot of layers. Some for background some for characters etc. When people draw a single character piece they usually keep full body on one layer with some exeptions for armor, accesories etc.

As for your second question there is no such book! You have to elarn everuthing from basics up to difficult things, and then you will start to learn to create concept. First of all learn, anatomy, values, coulour theory, perspective, composition, etc there's a tutorials section on this forum which u will find very useful.

[bizarre]

Layers allow for non-destructive editing, and you can have layers that are basically just blocks of shapes that you can use for selections

explanation: I typically use a lot of layers that are turned off, but holding ctrl and clicking the layer thumbnail selects the pixels of that layer. it's great for chaotic pieces where you might need to only select, say, these few windows from a cityscape, or the outline of a complicated piece of tech, whatever.

[StreetBehemoth]

I have an amazing teacher who says that layers are for people that are going to make a mistake. Meaning that having one layers teaches you to do things right the first time, or get really good at fixing the problem. Mind you this is rather extreme and is probably more of an exercise then a working method, for most people. But! I would take into this into consideration as a practice for yourself. He has showed us how to take a rough to finished greyscale on the same layer, add one layer for color (mind you if you values are perfect in your grayscale you can put your color layer on color blend mode and it will work perfectly, but only if the values are right, e.g. something that is white in your greyscale will remain white in your color, is you want a light color it still needs some value.) then he adds an opaque layer on top for highlights and whatnot. These layers aren't for safety, they all have an aesthetic purpose. It's a really interesting method, and easy to know which layer you are on.

Yes it's destructive, but once you get good enough it wont matter.

[eobet]

I have an amazing teacher who says that layers are for people that are going to make a mistake.

What about people who wants to try different design variations?

Also, your teacher's method was used by the old masters like Caravaggio. Only he used a brown underpainting instead of greyscale, perhaps to get some warmth into the final piece (I do not know the original cause, but a Photoshop colored grayscale piece can still look flat or monochromatic if you're not careful).

[bizarre]

In the classroom, theorycraft and promoting the 'one layer to rule them all' method is fine and dandy.

In the real world, clients want to change things, and things have to be adjusted anyhow, and it's just unrealistic to expect any flexibility with flattened images.

Also, if you get confused using more than three layers, you can expand the layer palette dock, or use groups of layers.