musings
I've gotten into the habit of keeping things on as many different layers as possible in Photoshop, both so I can go back and fiddle with things later and so I have a better chance of figuring out what I did to get X effect later. When I'm painting something from scratch, multiple layers is less useful for both of these things. I mean, maybe you want to paint each major "thing" on a separate layer, but really I don't have as much need to go back and fiddle later, and layers don't give me as much of a clue of how I did it because the useful stuff is what colors and brush settings I used, which isn't recorded in the layers. But I still feel uncomfortable about putting too much on the same layer, so end up adding new layers every now and again anyways. And I've discovered that simply being able to see the progress I've made from each layer to the next is very encouraging. And it's even more liberating than the undo button. Even if I'm still more likely to just paint over a mistake/change I didn't like, having it on a new layer makes it easier to make the potential mistake in the first place.
I think I used to use layers much more systematically when I painted, more like how I use them altering pre-existing images. Layer 0: background, Layer 1: skin, Layer 2: skin shadows, Layer 3: skin highlights, Layer 4: more shadows, Layer 5: more highlights, and then on to the hair/eyes/lips/clothes/jewelry/etc. Which worked in its own way, but right now it feels too "controlled" and thus doesn't give me enough control.
I feel a bit weird talking about Photoshop without having posted much of what I've been doing, but I don't particularly want to, and I think I'm afraid that if I get too caught up in posting before I have something I want to post, I'll stop painting. Again. I think on some level I've been wanting to paint/whatever to show off to people or "establish" this part of myself that was so important to my identity for almost my entire life, and that's at least part of why I haven't been able to for so long. Which sounds pathetic when I write it, but it's true. (It also sounds annoyingly like something that I've heard and been warned against and whatnot a million times over. But it's something you have to deal with yourself, and no one else's wisdom can do it for you. Especially since the same doubtless applies to writing and reading and everything else I used to love but can't bring myself to do anymore, and I still can't get over it.)
And maybe that's why I've always seemed to cycle through interests. Because there gets to be too much pressure, more from myself than anyone else, but probably even harder to avoid because of that, and then I just focus on something else until the pressure's become something manageable.
Or I could be completely full of shit. :D
I think I used to use layers much more systematically when I painted, more like how I use them altering pre-existing images. Layer 0: background, Layer 1: skin, Layer 2: skin shadows, Layer 3: skin highlights, Layer 4: more shadows, Layer 5: more highlights, and then on to the hair/eyes/lips/clothes/jewelry/etc. Which worked in its own way, but right now it feels too "controlled" and thus doesn't give me enough control.
I feel a bit weird talking about Photoshop without having posted much of what I've been doing, but I don't particularly want to, and I think I'm afraid that if I get too caught up in posting before I have something I want to post, I'll stop painting. Again. I think on some level I've been wanting to paint/whatever to show off to people or "establish" this part of myself that was so important to my identity for almost my entire life, and that's at least part of why I haven't been able to for so long. Which sounds pathetic when I write it, but it's true. (It also sounds annoyingly like something that I've heard and been warned against and whatnot a million times over. But it's something you have to deal with yourself, and no one else's wisdom can do it for you. Especially since the same doubtless applies to writing and reading and everything else I used to love but can't bring myself to do anymore, and I still can't get over it.)
And maybe that's why I've always seemed to cycle through interests. Because there gets to be too much pressure, more from myself than anyone else, but probably even harder to avoid because of that, and then I just focus on something else until the pressure's become something manageable.
Or I could be completely full of shit. :D