Working with Mistakes || Princess

One of the pieces I created when I first made Jade, was a picture of her sitting on a throne, shrouded in darkness. I was so proud of how I worked with shadows to drape over her features and make her look more spooky, more creepy. At the time Jade's personality was more dark and sinister. She was more akin to her father 'Pitch', than her current personality as I write her now, which is more loving and upbeat.

I decided to redraw it, and while at first it was looking great, around midway through doing working on it I discovered I'd accidentally (le gasp) merged the sketch layer with the lineart. Already I can hear the sighs of understanding from every digital artist out there, it happens to us all. Sadly, I'd already worked so much with this mistake, I couldn't just 'undo' until the mistake was undone, given my limited undo's.

So I worked with it.

It was a lot harder because my usual tactic is highlighting the insides of the lineart and using the fill option to get the base colours down, then work on shading while that areas still selected. But with the sketch layer merged with the lineart, this option wasn't as easy to use as before. Instead, I had to do a lot by hand (Terrible I know). While this took a lot more work, and I couldn't just 'get rid' of the sketch layer. The finished piece still looks a lot better than the original!

For one, it's complete. And for another, it's a lot less sketchy, despite still being merged with the sketch layer. If anything, it adds to it! Plus the detail around it takes away from the flaws, which is what you want to aim for. You want the finished product to be good enough to make the mistakes dimmer.

Check out the process here!