What is a layer?
A layer, in a piece of digital art, is a magical thing that can make our workflow smoother and easier, and it can also save a lot of headaches in the future when we go from pencils to inks to colors too. Okay, so maybe it’s not actually magic, but it’s pretty darn close!
Layers are like stacks of transparencies used for projection: every transparency carries a bit of text or an element of the image, so that we can separate the pencil sketch layer from the inked art layer, and when all the transparencies are stacked on top of each other, they form the complete image. You can make each layer visible or invisible with only one click, and manipulation of one layer doesn’t affect art on another layer.
But what are layers and how do they work? Let’s look at the following example images. Now that the sketch has been done, the art can be completed by inking and coloring on it. The colored drawing in this screenshot is made from five layers...
