Hello Everyone, my name is Sasha! In this tutorial, I will go over how to make an Isometric drawing in Clip Studio Paint, from start to finish using a very simple method! I've included a video as well as a step-by-step explanation guide for you to take a look at. Enjoy!

Steps to making an Isometric drawing

Step 1: Understanding Isometric Art

 

Step 2: Beginning a drawing, from research to rough sketches

 

Step 3: From a rough sketch to an isometric drawing

 

Step 4: From an Isometric sketch to a final painting

 

Step 1: Understanding Isometric Art

An isometric drawing is a 3-dimensional representation of an object, on a 2-dimensional surface. The particularity of an isometric drawing is that it is a representation of an object, that isn’t affected by any distortion.

AN ISOMETRIC DRAWING IN COMPARISON TO A PERSPECTIVE DRAWING

When we look at things through a lens, it distorts reality. We all know that a defining characteristic of a cube is that its two edges are parallel. However, if I was to take a photo of a cube, I would notice that prolonged, these edges end up meeting somewhere, therefore not appearing parallel. They would meet at a point, that we call, a vanishing point. Our eye operates just the same way as a camera lens, that is why, things appear smaller, the further they get!

A drawing in perspective can have up to 6 vanishing points, the more vanishing points, the more distorted it gets. It comes without saying, that an isometric drawing, would include no vanishing point, nor horizon line, how easier than that could it be!

 

AN ISOMETRIC DRAWING IN COMPARISON TO OTHER TYPES OF AXONOMETRIC PROJECTIONS

Hold on, we distinguished an isometric drawing from a drawing with linear perspective, but any drawing without perspective isn’t necessarily Isometric. The isometric drawing belongs to a larger category, it belongs to the category of Axonometric projections. Don’t let this complicated word fool you! It's actually a very simple concept. An axonometric projection is any representation where the lines between the object and the picture plane, are parallel! In other words, it’s a projection with a vanishing point that is set to infinity!

 

 

There are three types of axonometric projection, the dimetric projection, most often used in video games, the trimetric projection, and the Isometric projection. The particularity of the Isometric projection is that the three axes, x y, and z are equally foreshortened. In order for all the axes to be equally foreshortened, all the edges of an isometric shape have to be inclined at the same angle, an angle of 30 degrees, as shown in the drawing below. This type of drawing is often used by engineers and occasionally architects. They are also often used by illustrators! In my opinion, they are a great touch if you want to make your drawing look futuristic!

 

Now lets move on to the drawing part!

Step 2: Beginning a drawing, from research to rough sketches

This step is often overlooked, but it is actually a crucial step! I kept it brief as the tutorial is focused on how to make an Isometric illustration.

During this step, don’t bother yourself trying to make it look Isometric, be as free as you can be!

 

The first thing you want to have is an idea. What story do you want to tell through your drawing?

If you are out of inspiration, you can look through photography websites, you can look at pictures on social media, you can look at screenshots from movies (filmgrab.com), you can even go for a walk, scroll through old photos, read poems, anything really could be an inspiration!

Some of the questions you should be asking yourself are the following:

• What is the mood? Happy, scary, mysterious…?

• What is the time of the year?

• What is the time of the day

• Who are the characters?

• What message do you want to convey?

 

Once you know what you want to say, the next step to start sketching, anything that goes through your mind! Some people like to do this at the same time as the first step, it’s up to you. At this point, you shouldn’t be too judgmental of your work, think of it as a brainstorming phase. You can start thinking about the composition of your drawing.

Some of the questions you might want to ask yourself are the following:

• Where is the focus of the drawing, the center of attention?

• What composition tells the story better?

• What kinds of shapes convey this emotion the best?

 

Simultaneously, you might want to pull out some references to make things easier.

You might want to look at the way specific things look like, to make it easier to draw:

• What does a little European house look like?

• What kinds of trees and plants grow in this specific climate?

• What kind of clothes would a European gardener wear?

• What color palette is common during summertime?

 

By the end of this step, you should have an idea of what you want your final drawing to look like. ( I think it’s important to note that your drawing might end up looking very different!) The idea is to have a rough sketch of your final composition, with or without colors, it’s up to you! The rough sketch, although doesn’t have to be isometric should still keep the idea of it in mind. For example, don’t make it an extreme low shot, instead try to aim for ¬¬a high shot, showing 3 sides of the objects.

Step 3: From a rough sketch to an isometric drawing

As a reminder, here are the things we want to keep in mind when doing an Isometric drawing:

• The lines must be parallel to one and another

• The edges have to be inclined at an angle of 30 degrees

• The three faces should have equal shortening

 

There are a number of methods that you can use in Clip Studio paint to make an Isometric Drawing. After browsing a little I found an already existing tutorial on how to make an Isometric drawing in Clip Studio Paint, which I attached in a link to below. Steele shared a great method of approaching Isometric drawings that I would totally recommend looking at.

The method I use is a bit different and might suit you better if you are looking for something a little more simple!

First thing first, I recommend you to turn on the grid. It helps visualize things! You can do so this way:

To change its settings, simply go to File – Preference _Ruler/Units

Then make sure your rough drawing layer is turned on, with a low opacity at the very top of your layer hierarchy. This makes the process 100 times easier!

Next, consider what the dominating shape of your drawing might be, this will be the base for building our drawing. In my example, it is the house.

Once you have all of that set up we can start building!

There are essentially Four STEPS:

• The first one is to set up your polygon,

• next to place your parallel rulers

• then to trace the shapes using the rulers that you’ve placed

• and the last step is to outline the visible lines of your structure with the brush tool, to make the sketch very easy to read.

Couldn’t be more simple!

Let’s open the Polygon tool in the [shape tool] menu. In the [tool properties] make sure the aspect type is set so that the Width is equal to the Height. This will ensure that all the edges of our cube are the same length!

 

 

When you are ready, place the polygon shape on a new layer, to fit the shape of your dominating shape. Naturally, It won't match the shape exactly since we might be shifting the perspective. I called this layer, Base.

Now the reason why the polygon tool is so marvelous for making Isometric drawings, is that a polygon shape with edges that are all same length is a perfect 3-dimensional cube that respects all the conditions of an Isometric projection!

For the next step, we are going to create 3 new layers. One for each axis, the Z to X and the Y-axis. It might help to associate each of them to a different color.

To each layer, we will assign a parallel ruler tool corresponding to the axis. The [pararllel ruler] tool can be found under the [ruler tool] – [special tool] – [parallel line]. Another handy thing to do is to set the step of the angle at 30 in the [parallel tool properties]. This way the ruler will snap when at a 30-degree angle making it very accurate for the angles to measure 30 degrees

Once you have placed your 3 rulers, all you have to do is go back and forth between these layers to build the structural shapes of your drawing with the pen/brush/pencil tool. It helps, to have a specific color assigned to each axis. For example, for all the vertical lines, go to the layer Z-axis and draw all the lines that are vertical. Because the parallel ruler tool is turned on, this process is super easy!

Here is what the structure of my drawing looked like:

With the brush tool, I then outlined in black on a new layer all the important visible lines of my drawing. I used the function Shift hold then let go, to make straight lines with the pen tool.

And there you go! Following these steps, you should have the structure of your Isometric drawing set and ready to go for the next step, painting. As you can see the structure of my drawing doesn’t include any detail, I kept the details on the rough layer to use as a reference while painting.

Step 4: From an Isometric sketch to a final painting

I think painting lineless fits the aesthetic of an Isometric drawing very nicely, as well as using geometric shapes which is why I decided to take this approach. My coloring process is very straightforward and you can apply it to any type of painting you want.

The tools that I use the most are the following:

 

• The polyline selection tool, found in the tool menu under [Selection area]- [Polyline] It is a very versatile tool and allows you to correct your mistakes so easily!

 

• The bucket fill tool found in the menu. Its shortcut is G but I like to use the shortcut Alt+Del. It does the same thing but I find it to be a bit cleaner.

 

• The Clip to the layer Below tool ( Lifesaver !), found above the layer menu

 

• And finally the lock transparent pixel tool!

 

• And I also use the brush tool for textures.

 

The first step for coloring is to block all the main colors for all the main shapes, each in a different layer. Set the opacity of the structure layer low, you want it to be there for reference but you don’t want it to be overwhelming.

Start by creating a new color layer and name it according to the object you are painting.

Then, using the polyline tool, select the outlines of the object you are painting.

Next, choose the color you want it to be. (Keep in mind you can very easily change it later)

 

 

Finally hit alt+del for filling the shape!.

There you have your first shape! Now you can do the same thing for each of your shapes!

For over lapping shapes, instead of precisely selecting around the previous shape, a way to save time is to use the Clip to layer below tool!

Another tip to change color very fast, is to select a shape, press the lock transparent pixels tool and use the shortcut alt- del to switch colors.

At the end of this phase, you should have something like that:

Once that is over and you are happy with the color, you can go through the same process but applying details. To keep it simple to change colors, later on, remember to put each color shape on its own layer. If you want to see the process more in detail, feel free to go look at the timelapse video I made!

Simultaneously you may want to be applying effects to your painting. You can easily do this by playing around with different brushes and their texture as well as trying different modes to your painting layers, from Multiply to, add, and overlay.

This is what my painting looked like after adding details and a few effects:

And finally the last step that is completely optional is adding filters to modify to colors. The one I often use is Color Balance and Hue/ Saturation and contrast. These filters can be found under the top menu bar [Layer] – [New correction Layer]

That's it! That what my final Isometric painting looks like before and after effect filters.

Author's word

Thank you for reading this tutorial, I had a lot of fun making it! I hope you could learn a few things from it, and I hope that you will all make beautiful drawings.

Clip Studio Paint is such a user-friendly software and is so easy to go around, I encourage you to experiment with it.

 

If you have any tips yourself or any questions, feel free to leave me a message in the comments below.

And I would love to see your Isometric drawings!

Thanks again!