Guys, do try to be smarter than I was today.

~A cautionary tale~

Would you believe that this little bit of hair painting (on the character to the right) took 2+ hours? 

It's only that bit of color on the hair right? Well. Let me tell you a tale that works through months until it gets to this point. I had been painting the previous versions of this, all of which I've been showing you through the process. The issue begins back around when I first started this image, when I had a million plus layers.

Somewhere in all of that mess I used a masking layer. And I slowly. So very slowly. Worked it down until this one layer you see now. But, when I was trying to paint his hair, there was such a difficulty that I couldn't get past! Somehow, the hair layer just was ignoring my paint strokes at the bottom part of Trezari's hair.

So that absolutely means that it must be a masking layer problem right? It was the most common idea I could bring all of it down to, so surely. It couldn't have been anything else at all.

Right. That's the only thing that could be happening. And no matter what I looked up, no matter what poking around I attempted, I just couldn't. get. things. to. work. Here I was, carefully trying to un-craft what I had done previously with the masking layers, even though they really weren't showing up at all on the layers menu. ...right?

At the end of that 2+ hours that I was struggling in, I accidentally clicked something. And the realization hit me like a pile of brick against the head.
It wasn't the masking layer magic I had invented. And it was nothing to do with the painting layer. 

I had forgotten that I had a LINE ART LAYER. Somewhere during all of that weeding down to one layer, I had actually had two layers all along. And do you know the important thing about Layers in Clip Studio paint? They lie on top of one another. And somewhere in all of that mess and weeding down, I had painted on that line art layer. Meaning no wonder my painting wasn't working. I had a layer on top doing its job and hiding the new marks.

Right. I'm just exhausted now. I hope this painting feels good for itself. I'm going to go play games for awhile again.
But next week? It is definitely going to be finished!