Hello! This tutorial will show my process of making flower bushes in Clip Studio Paint with watery as the main brush type (though I do use decoration brushes as well made from watery and basic hard brushes).

 

Ok, Let's Start! (video below if you want to watch me draw with the same process!)

 

Base Leaves

You base can be made any leaf brush you want. I personally like to use a hard brush with full opacity for the first outline. Then, I SELECT the OBJECT, and use a darker color to make shadows underneathe (opacity should be at about 80%)

Make sure to go between the two colors so they can overlap with one another and give a sense of Lighting.

Flower Brushes (Choosing the Right One!)

I use a VEGETATION brush for this. These flowers were made with the WATERY brush and the G-PEN brush. With this, I can get a variety of values and add depth to the final product.

 

For the particle settings I have a DENSITY of 1/5 and the SPRAY DEVIATION is 3/5.

Adding Flowers

When adding flowers, draw according to the shape of the bush. To give depth, you can either rely on the lighter particles, or you can work at 80%-90% opacity for your brush.

 

You can adjust your particle size and your settings throughout to get the best results!

COMBINE all of your images (with the exception of the background) and make another layer for the LIGHTING. The light souce is white (SOFT LIGHT, 100% OPACITY). On another layer, make the bottom of your bush dark green (GLOW DODGE, 50% OPACITY)

Then, gradually erase parts of the white layer so that the lighting is consistent.

Make another layer. This time, choose a color that compliments the light and dark. It must be darker than the lightese color, but lighter than the darkest.

 

Change the layer from NORMAL to ADD

 

Next, COMBINE ALL LAYERS (except background) and make a copy of this object. On the copied version--which is on top of the original-- use GAUSSIAN BLUR (The STRENGTH is 50), choose how blurry you want to make it.

Change the GAUSSIAN BLUR layer from NORMAL to SCREEN and reduce the opacity to 50%

COMBINE ALL LAYERS and start adding details.

The areas that should be blended the most are the ones between the patches of flowers. Darker areas which can be used for creating contrast.

 

When blending, use the WATERY brush. This is where the combined layers you've done come in handy! When all the layers are combined, the watery brush easily picks up the color information and can blend them easier.

 

The trick to this method is to use the ALT button when you want to color pick.

I like to use the "melting" method of blending. I color pick the area I want to blend, then I make downward strokes with the WATERY BRUSH to make it seem as if the colors are running.

Now you can add little designs either by hand or with decoration brushes. Making little dots by hand is an option, or you can use the WATERY brush in order to make SMALL DOTS in the FLOWER DECORATION brushes like these.

You can add little details to darker areas by making leaves with lighter colors to contrast them.

Now that you've added some detail, it's time for contrast!

Adding Contrast

Here's a neat trick to handle the values of your flower bush!

Make a DUPLICATE LAYER. For this layer, we're going to turn down the saturation.

 

Go to EDIT-->TONAL CORRECTION-->HUE/SATURATION/LUMINOSITY and turn the SATURATION down to -100.

It looks a little dull! Go to EDIT-->TONAL CORRECTION-->LEVEL CORRECTION and play around with the contrast. Make the whites brighter and the darks darker.

Next, turn the black and white layer from NORMAL to SCREEN. It will make the colors look slightly pastel and softer. If you want to add even more contrast, I suggest duplicating the b+w layer again and combining the two black and white layers together.

 

Next, Combine your black and white layer(s) and your flower bush so that they are one!

And done! You have your flower bush!

 

(P.S If you want to manipulate how the color looks, you can DUPLICATE the layer again.

Go to EDIT-->TONAL CORRECTION-->COLOR BALANCE to choose the way you want the colors to lean towards. I personally like leaning blue! )