Color theory is hard. Coloring things impacted by colored lighting and atmosphere is hard. I mean, what does a pink ball look like under green light?!

So in this tutorial, I’ll be teaching how to turn a “normal” illustration into a weathered illustration! I’ll show you how to use correction layers to adjust the illustration’s color mood, and Clip Studio Assets brushes you can use to add more environmental details.

 

Ultimately, it's best if these colors were naturally painted (with only a bit of correction layer use for touch-ups) rather than wholly relying on correction layers alone. You can do this by doing a small thumbnail first. However, these techniques work well for webcomics, beginners, or if you need to get something done fast.

 

“Will you talk about gradient maps?”

As you can see from other weather tutorials, some artists have already done great explanations on how to use gradient maps to color grade your illustration. In that case, I won’t be explaining how to use gradient maps. Check out their wonderful tutorials!

 

And in my opinion, I feel that gradient maps can be a bit too finnicky. I’d need to know what layer blending mode is best and how transparent the layer should be. The same layer also affects both light and shadows when the 2 might need to be separated into 2 different layer modes. Later, I will explain how this issue is solved with the Color Balance correction layer.

In gradient maps, you also need to pick out the right colors and that may take some time. Gradient maps are very particular. With adjustment layers, it’s all about sliders, so it’s more flexible and easy to use.

 

I’ll be using this illustration of mine for demonstrations, and as you can see, it is colored with neutral lighting, AKA “normal” lighting.

My character's name is Dr. Mul by the way :)

Fundamentals to know

Brighter lights produce more contrasting colors, sharper shadow edges and less soft gradient shadows.

An easier way to check how contrasted your colors are is to use a grayscale filter!

1. Make a new layer that's on top of all your other layers.

2. Put layer blending mode on Color

3. Fill layer with black, white or grey

Warm lights produce cold shadows, and cold lights produce warm shadows.

There are circumstances where an environment will have warm lights with warm shadows and vice versa, but that usually occurs in artificially lighted areas, like indoor rooms. This tutorial focuses on color changes caused by weather, which is a natural and outdoorsy element, so we’ll be using the formerly stated principle.

Generally, reds and yellows are warm, while blues and greens and cold. However, everything is relative and context is important! For example, magenta is colder than red.

 

How to use correction layers + tips

To make a new correction layer, go to [Layer] > [New Correction Layer]. You will see many correction layer types to choose from.

This tutorial will make use of these 3 types:

1. Brightness/Contrast

2. Tone Curve

3. Color Balance

I'll explain 2 and 3 since 1 should be very straightforward.

NOTE: The difference between Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation/Luminosity brightness adjustment is that the former retains more contrast between colors while the latter retains less contrast.

This is what the tone curve looks like. Don't be intimidated by its mathematical look!

The left side of the graph represents dark values, while the right represents lighter values.

"What are values?"

How bright your color is. It goes from 0-100. The lower the number, the darker it is. You can check your value's number in the color slider and color wheel. It's labelled with a "V"

Knowing the value's number is important when you're using gradient maps and tone curves, as it allows you to pinpoint where on the map your color is so you have more accuracy in editing it.

This is where your grayscale filter comes in handy, because the "V" number isn't the same for the color as it is for its grayscale version. The grayscale version's number is more accurate.

Also, see how the tone curve has grids? Each line represents 25% value. Eeeeehhhh just ignore the "255" numbers.

See those dark grey mountain-like spikes? They represent how many colors are of a certain value. Most of my illustration has darker colors, so the spikes are higher on the left side, which represents darker values.

So if I want my darker values to go lighter, I click on a left part of the diagonal line and drag it up

See how the diagonal line bends to a curve, so other lighter values are consequently adjusted to be lighter?

If I don't want lighter values to be adjusted, I'll click on that place and pin it down.

Keep in mind that this will result in lesser contrasting colors. This is because I've adjusted my darker values to be closer to my lighter values.

Most aesthetic low contrast auto action tone curve adjustments I've seen have made the diagonal line look like a staircase. Try it!

Fun fact: Making it look like a spiky mountain results in a rainbow filter!

You can also put correction layers on blending modes, so have fun choosing a blending mode for your rainbow filter!

The funkier the curve, the funkier the colors.

On the tone curve window's top left corner, you can access making adjustments to the reds, greens and blues of your illustration. Everything I just explained applies to this part too.

Want to more red? Raise the dot on the curve. Want less red? Lower the dot.

Onto color balance!

There's 3 sliders, Cyan and Red, Magenta and Green, and Yellow and Blue. They're arranged like that because they're opposites of each other. So if you want less yellow, you'll add more blue.

In Gradient Balance, that's where you can adjust the colors of your highlights, half tones (your "normal", base colors so to speak), and shadows.

This is why I prefer adjusting my colors with Color Balance instead of gradient maps. This way, it feels more precise and less finnicky.

Keep "Keep brightness" checked on if you want to keep your values the same. They won't be completely kept the same, but the program will try its best 😅

Hot and sunny

Hot and sunny weather means there's going to be warm light to convey heat, which means there's also going to be cool shadows! This weather also has stronger light, so shadows are more harsh and contrasted.

Make a new Color Balance layer. The half tones would have a warm, orange tint, so move the sliders to yellow and red. How far you should move the sliders depends on how your illustration looks. So just fiddle around until it feels right!

Onto adjusting the shadows, which should be cold. It's important not to overdo it as the overall tone of the setting should still be warm.

Also, I put in more cyan than blue because the blue in this slider is more of a warm, ultramarine blue. Cyan is a colder blue. Ya see, even in titular cold colors, there's still a warm and cold side! Everything is relative!

Finally, the highlights. They should be yellow.

Hmm...I know bright and sunny lights cause contrasting shadows, but I think my shadows are too dark and make it look like an evening scene. I was thinking more of a hot and sunny 2pm afternoon.

To brighten up my shadows a bit, so I used the tone curve instead of other brightness adjustment layers because it's more precise.

With my grayscale filter, I found out that the shadows I wanted to adjust are a value of 75 and below, so I placed a "pin" on that 75 mark.

The point circled in yellow is a "pin" point, used to prevent lighter tones from being adjusted.

Besides having warmer colors, another way to indicate a hot and sunny day would be to add sweat. There’s a lot of great water droplet brushes in CSP Assets, but most are meant to be used in a bigger size, otherwise they’d look like crunchy color blobs. Unfortunately, Dr. Mul is small, so I had to manually draw sweat.

It’s not difficult though!

1. Draw the sweat with a highlight color (In this case, it's white)

2. Eyedrop a shadow color from the skin.

3. Use that color as the sweat's shadow.

4. If the sweat drop is particularly juicy, paint the shadow color inside.

5. If the sweat is EVEN juicier, paint in a highlight dot.

I couldn't upload a gif of the process even though it's within uploading capacity so I uploaded it to Twitter if you wanna see!

Here's my favorite sweat brush btw. You can find more by typing "sweat" or "water" in the Assets page!

If it's sunny, that means there's a lot of light shining through.

This means there's less clouds blocking the sun. But for this one, I'm just gonna have a clear sky.

To further convey how much light is streaming in, add some light rays and lens flares. I've also added dust particles because strong light usually makes the more visible. It also just looks nicer

 

LIGHT RAYS:

• Layer blending mode: Add(Glow) because it does have a nice glow effect

• Color hex code: 6D5635. A muddy, yellow-orange color

• To make some parts brighter, I added white with an airbrush

• I made some gaps in the light ray so they don't obscure too much of the window

 

LENS FLARES:

• The brush I used doesn't allow you to change its color

• Layer blending mode: Add(Glow)

• I used a soft eraser to erase some parts so they're less bright

 

DUST:

• I used the default Spray brush. You can find it in the airbrush section

• Color: white

• Layer blending mode: Normal. 34% opacity

Done!

 

Here's the brushes I've used. The lens flare brush is free, the light ray brush is 50CP.

Overcast

An overcast weather has lots of clouds blocking the sun, so with less light comes a darker atmosphere and less contrasting shadows. So, I used a brightness/contrast correction layer.

This weather has a more moody tone to it, so it should have a colder color atmosphere.

Because there's not much light and shadow play going on, most of the adjustments are made to the half tones.

I know I've already darkened the entire illustration, but I want the sky to look gloomier, so with a correction layer, I darkened it.

Since there's not much strong light, I lowered the opacity of the glass shine on the windows and glasses.

Onto clouds! Eyedrop your sky color and darken that color like it's a shadow color. That will be your cloud's color.

Here's the brush I used for the cloud. It's free! I used [雲 単色 V]

Perspective affects everything, including clouds!

The dark part is just the underside of the clouds. Use white to indicate the top part of the clouds. After drawing in the white part, I erase a bit of the bottom with the same cloud brush so it actually looks like we are looking at the underside more than the top side.

I thought the clouds looked a bit too crisp for being so far away, so I used a bit of Gaussian blur on them.

I also thought that my leaves looked a bit too "sunny", so with a tone curve, I toned it down. I used the tone curve instead of the brightness/contrast adjustment because I wanted to be more specific.

Finally, I lowered the opacity of the highlights on Mul's shirt. Darker weather calls for less intense highlights.

And done!

Gloomy rainstorm

To turn it into a normal rainy scene, just add some raindrops to the overcast illustration and you're done. Instead, I'll be showing you how to do something more dramatic, like a rainstorm! I'll be using the same overcast illustration.

 

First, I darkened it further with the tone curve because I don't want to darken everything. I want to preserve the brightness of highlights (over 80 value) because I want the lightning to produce bright highlights.

Next, with a color balance layer, I added more cyan and blue to the shadows.

I darkened the clouds and used a new gradient for the sky. It's 19瞑色 and I set its opacity to 70%

Time to add lightning! I used 雷ブラシ brush from this free lightning brush pack.

Remember that lightning works like veins or cracks! Sometimes they branch into each other.

I still have composition in mind, so I'm not going to draw lightning in random patterns. There's going to be one big strike of lightning in the middle window, which will be the focal point. The other lightning strikes will be much smaller but remain close to the big one.

Plus, multiple lightning strikes normally doesn't occur within close proximities of each other, so there's not going to be many strikes visible in this illustration. Besides being realistic, this also helps guide the eye in the composition and causes less visual mess!

 

I drew white lightning on a Normal layer. Here's how I made a glow effect:

1. Duplicate lightning layer

2. Set layer blending mode to Add(Glow)

3. Use Gaussian Blur

4. Lower opacity until it looked nice

There's only one, very narrow source of light, and I want to make the atmosphere more dramatic and gloomy, so I made the surrounding window frames and walls darker, except for the middle one.

The same applies to the glass shine. I cranked it back up to 100% opacity and used a masking layer to erase a bit of the parts that weren't in the middle.

I wanted to convey strong wind as it would add to the atmosphere, so by adding blown leaves, I can imply strong wind. Then, to REALLY convey how windy it is, I added motion blur. Access it by going to [Filter] > [Blur] > [Motion blur]

Because the motion blur filter allows you to adjust the direction angle, I make sure to angle towards the wind's direction, which is blowing towards the right. I chose that direction because it matches the lightning's slant. This way, it follows the line of action.

I want there to more of a focal point on the bright lightning, so with a Multiply layer, I airbrushed in some grey on the left part of the sky.

Correction layers can't do all the work for you. Sometimes you need to manually adjust things.

I wanted the part closest to the window to be bright, while the rest recedes into shadow. So, I airbrushed in some highlights on Mul's head and elbow, then airbrushed in some cold grey shadows on the parts I felt were too bright (his shirt, face and the seat) on a Multiply layer.

Lastly, time to do the rain! Here's the free brush I used.

There's already a lot of visual noise from the rain on the window, so I'll choose not to add raindrops in the background. Plus, the window is closer to us, so visual information is more important there than in the background.

When wind is strong enough, it can send raindrops trickling down on an angle, so I did that here to further convey strong winds.

 

And done!

Apocalypse

As a Southeast Asian who has only been to a snowing country once, I'm afraid I can't give you tips on snowy weather. However, I CAN show you how to do a cool apocalyptic scene! Using all the knowledge of correction layers I've talked about, you can create whatever weather/atmosphere you want!

 

Imagine an alien meteor hit Earth. The gas from it turns the air around us a sickly green and turns the air in higher altitudes a hazy blood red.

So, halftones and highlights will be red, while shadows will be green!

Hmm...I think my highlights are too bright. I'll tone them down. I'll also make a bit of my shadows darker, and make my darkest darks less dark.

Rainbow filter!!! It adds a sort of hazy, oil spill effect, like in the movie Annihilation.

For this one, I used a new tone curve layer. It was also quite strong, so I set the layer's opacity to 38%.

Time for the finishing touches!

I color picked the red sky and put a gradient of it over the illustration, on a Soft Light layer.

Then, on a Add(Glow) layer, I added green smoke. Unfortunately, I can't link you guys the mist brush I used because it was given to me by a friend, but I'm sure you can find alternatives on CSP Assets!

Thank you so much for reading my tutorial.

I hope I've explained these techniques well and I hope they're useful to you!