Tiny behind the scenes bit & preview (Patreon)

Here is a tiny tidbit I never mentioned before. :>

Sometimes when I post sketches and WIPs you'll see the piece in a black void, which is the result of how I do compositions for my pieces.

I usually do a sketch on a very big canvas and THEN think about how to frame it in the best way.
I found the most efficient way to do that is to put all my layers in one group (all) and have that group inherit the alpha of a rectangle on a vector layer below it. That means that everything I'm doing in the "all" layer group will only appear within the confines of the rectangle. The black comes from a completely black pixel layer below that.

If I did it the other way around and used a pixel layer to draw a black frame around the character I would constantly have re-draw pieces of the frame and resize others whenever I wanted to try out a different composition. And that is a nightmare! :S
By using a vector layer I remain super flexible. If I quickly want to see how the piece would look like in a more horizontal format for example, all I need to do is make the rectangle more horizontal, which I can do with two clicks by just dragging the anchor points around.

That was me art-nerding! 😬