Best digital art day I ever had was a total accident

I spent 6 hours last Sunday trying to finish a piece and kept messing up the shading. Then I accidentally hit 'invert colors' and it looked way better than what I was trying to do. Has anyone else had a happy accident totally save a project?

2 comments

2 Comments

johnson.jesse9d ago

The thing that gets me about stories like this is how often it happens. I've had plenty of digital art screw ups that turned into something better than what I was aiming for. Was it just the invert that worked for you or did you keep messing with it after that? Sometimes one wrong click opens up a whole new way of seeing the piece.

christopher_sullivan9d ago

Wait, have you ever tried throwing a layer effect on top of the accident to see where it goes? That invert was just the starting point, I swear the real magic happened when I duplicated the inverted layer and started playing with the opacity and blend modes. I dropped a soft gradient map over the whole thing and it turned into this weirdly atmospheric scene that I never would have thought to paint on my own. The best part is you can always go back to the original file, so there's zero risk in seeing how far the happy accident can take you. I've ended up keeping more of those "oops" saves than the ones I was actually trying to make.