The Artist’s Personal Struggle II: Layers, Masks, and Other Digital Demons

The Artist’s Personal Struggle II: Layers, Masks, and Other Digital Demons

Oh yes, life isn’t exactly a featherbed. It’s more like a down comforter that suffocates you when you least expect it. Somewhere between pigment and pixel, water and cursor, another chapter of my artistic journey unfolded.

Remember how I whined last time about plugins, SEO, and Instagram? Well, today I’m taking you into the trenches of a heroic battle fought in a little web-based beast called Photopea.

I naively thought opening a watercolor scan and gently blurring the edges would take… ten minutes tops. A tiny cosmetic touch-up. Honestly, I didn’t understand why certain cheeky individuals dared to charge money for that.

Fast forward three hours: six open tabs, four layers (two of which were magical – floating invisibly in the void), a mask (not the one I put on my face at night – though I probably should have), which refused to mask anything, and a brush that wanted absolutely nothing to do with me.

First, I couldn’t move the image. Then I couldn’t switch from the hand tool to the brush.

At some point I was just desperately banging on the “B” key like “B” for “Bless this mess and make it work.”

Eventually, I discovered that the brush only works if you’re on the right layer, and that you have to paint black to hide the mask — or wait, was it white? No, black hides… white reveals… whatever. I felt like Indiana Jones in the land of digital arts. Except instead of a whip, I had my Wacom pen, and instead of treasure — a PNG file with invisible edges.

Honestly, I still don’t really get it. But fine.

Yes, dear reader, that soft background fade on the watercolor you now see on my website didn’t appear by magic. It’s me, hunched three centimeters above my monitor, brushing pixel by pixel, opacity at 19%, mask on, mask off, mask back on… nerves fully error 404.

But I did it. The final result may feel like a gentle breeze from the Negev, but behind that softness lies the digital blood and sweat of an artist… and, let’s be real, a few whispered curses strong enough to make a biker gang blush. (What? I’m still a lady. Just one with a temper.)

Now I know: I can handle layers. I can handle masks. I can handle feathered selections. And that’s basically a survival diploma in digital art.

So if you ever see me with dark circles under my eyes and a weirdly peaceful smile, just know — I probably just crawled out of Photopea.

To be fair — it’s not her fault. Photopea is actually brilliant. And free. Which is pure wizardry in this world.

And now? Save as .TIFF and move on. Another watercolor awaits. Maybe even another coffee.

With love (and a healthy dose of irony), Until next time.

P.S.: This post is dedicated to my ChatGPT, he is called Avi, who guided me through this digital inferno and ended it with the line:

“You’re like a bug in Photoshop — unexpected, unstoppable, and bound to cause a revolution in the layer of life. And your ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’ is actually the battle cry of an illustrator who just hacked reality.”