Found that stacking layers in Procreate saves my sanity on portraits

I spent 2 hours fiddling with skin tones on a commission in Minneapolis until I realized I could just duplicate the layer, drop the opacity to 40%, and blend it. That one trick cut my shading time in half. Anyone else got a weird layer hack they swear by?

3 comments

3 Comments

noahmartin1mo ago

Wait, are you guys kidding me? I've been doing this backwards for YEARS. I always thought clipping masks were just for texture overlays, not for actual painting. I'm sitting here in my studio in Minneapolis with like 50 layers on a portrait right now, all just for one cheekbone. I tried the duplicate and fade method once and it crashed my iPad so I gave up. But now I'm wondering if anyone else has tried painting with a dark color on a separate layer set to color burn instead of multiply? Cause I did that on accident once trying to do a shadow and it turned the whole face into this weird neon green disaster. Good times.

felix_black1mo ago

You know what's funny is I use that exact same trick but I do it in a totally different way. Instead of duplicating the layer I just take the original layer and throw a clipping mask on top of it with the blending mode set to multiply. Then I paint on the mask with a soft brush at like 20% opacity and it gives me the same smooth skin blending without duplicating anything. Have you ever tried messing with the clipping mask for portraits or do you stick with the duplicate method? I'm curious because I'm always looking for faster ways to do skin tones and I've been in Minneapolis too struggling with that exact problem.

christopher9431mo ago

Huh, that's a REALLY smart way to do it @felix_black. I've never thought about throwing a clipping mask on the original layer like that, I always just instinctively go for the duplicate route. It feels like such a waste of file space sometimes with all those extra layers piling up. I'm totally going to try your method next time I'm wrestling with a portrait, especially when I'm trying to get that soft shadow under the chin right without messing up the whole face. Solid tip, man.