Hi! I'm Jess, and in this tutorial I'll be taking you through the process of how I went from the sketch of my rescue dog Dottie to the final coloured illustration, sharing some tips and things I keep in mind when creating a background to boost my characters.

Brushes

For this illustration I wanted a strong emphasis on lighting and mood with a lot of blurred aspects, so I opted to use some pre-made brushes by Devin Elle Kurtz, which can be found below for free or an optional donation.

 

She also has a variety of other brush packs which are definitely worth a look at, or you can also browse Clip Studio Paint's assets to find any that suit your need.

To add finer details (such as the face details or rim light on the fur) I use a textured pencil brush called Opaque 1 that can be found in the pack below. Alternatively you can use a pencil that comes included in Clip Studio Paint, it all comes down to preference and how the brushes feel to you.

For my initial sketch I used the hard round brush that comes with Clip Studio Paint and make sure my pen pressure is on so it isn't as harsh as I keep my sketches quite loose and use them as a guide.

Sketch

For this piece I wanted to to illustrate one of my rescue dogs, Dottie, so while sketching I wanted some things to be a main focus; her distinctive face markings and belly spots, her ears that stick up when she's excited and her lolling tongue.

Her pose and the sketch isn't of much importance as she's going to be partially obscured by plants and foliage, and the sketch will be lowered in opacity while I work and later hidden, so here I can just focus on the shapes instead of making my sketch or line art perfect.

Research and colour theory

For this illustration I started by researching different mood lightings and locations, while keeping in mind colour theory and different moods/feelings normally attributed to each colour and what they can convey. You can feel free to mind map your own attributes to each side of the colour wheel, but here's some ideas I associate with them that help me decide on the colour palettes of my illustrations.

 

Ex:

 

Cool tones

• Menacing

• Cold

• Night time/Dusk

• Negative

• Sadness

 

Warm tones

• Passion

• Cozy

• Sunshine/sunset

-Positive

• Happiness

Deciding to stick to a warm colour palette, I decided to choose a grassy wheat field for my illustration and for my lighting to have a sunset/golden hour feel, so I can bring in warm golden tones and soften the hard black spots my dog has.

Establishing a focal point and grounds

I'm jumping a bit forward, but below is a rough colour block to show a few things I keep in mind while working: foreground (FG, the black)), mid-ground (MG, the dark grey) and background (BG, lighter grey), along with keeping an eye on the focal point of the illustration which in this, I want the background to boost my character and to draw the focus there.

 

Numbered below are the places where your eye will be drawn to in order, with your eyes instantly going to the point of the most contrast.

To make sure I'm following these values and keeping my focal point clear I create a black and white gradient map (that can be found under Layer > New correction layer > Gradient map) that I can toggle to be visible/hidden while I'm working.

 

Eventually establishing your FG, MG, BG and focal point(s) will become second nature to you and it'll be something you keep in mind subconsciously, but by keeping these things in mind you can instantly boost your illustrations and avoid them looking flat as there will be a depth of field established.

Colouring the character

Taking my sketch, I locked the transparent pixels and painted a mid toned brown so that it wasn't the harsh black and I also lowered the opacity of the layer and set it to multiply so that I could easily block in my character (using the lasso and fill tool) as shown in point 1, I then clipped my sketch layer to the blocked in layer. For the base colour I decided on a taupe colour (as my dog Dottie is black and white) to keep the warmth of the illustration and have the rim light be eye-catching. My main focus will be on the top two thirds of the character, as the bottom will be covered by the foreground elements in the future.

 

For point 2 & 3 I got my Opaque 1 brush and created a new layer and clipped it to my colour blocked shape layer also, and using a black I started to draw in some of her face details, and to colour her tongue I created a new layer under this one and used a mid toned pink to block in her tongue.

 

Creating a new layer (once again also clipped to my blocked in shape layer) and taking a soft yellow I sketched in some rough fur detail to show where the light would catch and also to emphasise her long fur texture as shown in 4. This will later be added to further when we've worked a bit on the background, so we can see what bits need further highlighting.

Now that the smaller details have been lined in we can now move on to block in her spots, for this I chose a very dark brown. To soften the harsh dark colour I created a new layer and clipped it down to the others and using a large soft airbrush that comes with CSP, I set the layer mode to Lighter colour and painted softly around the edges so that she will later fit in more with the background and look like she belongs, giving a softness to the character instead of keeping the harshness of the dark colours.

The background

I painted the background of this illustration intuitively for a lot of the time but to further reinforce the focal point (like detailed in my greyscale block in photo shown above) I kept the FG blurred and the darkest part of the illustration, the MG sharper while painting with some brighter tones such as creams or yellows and for the BG I started off using some semi-blurred elements in darker tones, that got lighter and blurrier the further they got back. I'll break down the next sections into FG, MG, BG so you can see what brushes I used and what my thought process was like for each section.

Background

For the background I wanted most of it to be very blurry, giving you a vague idea of what's in the background. My focus for this part is less on the shapes and brushes, and more on the colours and giving the idea of space.

 

I chose to have the sky be a light pastel colour while keeping the grassy ground aspects in more of a saturated golden colour palette and bringing those aspects quite high to give the idea that the field stretches on, and so that the sky has no contact with the character so the focal point is maintained.

 

For sky, tree and base golden ground colour I chose brushes from the Deciduous Trees section of Devin's brush pack listed above and blurred (refer to the FG section below for settings and details), the darker stalks is the Wild Plants 1 brush and blurred, and then choosing sky colour I switched to the Wild Flowers 2 brush and left unblurred.

Now that the base background has been established instead of blurring each element, I left each part unblurred and instead experimented with different layer modes. The focus of this part is to give as much colour variation as possible and to give the idea of a dense plant filled background. You don't have to worry too much about it being perfect as this lower part is going to be partially covered by the MG and FG elements, it's just so the line of separation for each section (FG, MG, BG) is softened.

To fill this lower area I used some of the grass and soft tall grass brushes set set the layers to Add, Soft light and Overlay to give a bright appearance as if the light is catching the grass, and brought the wildflower brush back and used a pink colour to break up the golden hues.

Midground

Moving onto the midground, which was the easiest part. I created a new layer and grabbed a warm dark brown colour and chose one of the soft grass brushes from Devin's pack and blocked in some rough grass. The aim is to cover most of the bright light colour at the bottom of the canvas and to give us some more colour variation so when we do our foreground elements, we can have different tones peek out between the foliage.

After the brown has been blocked down I used the tall grass brush to block in some light and dark grass using a light brown and mid toned brown. This is another section that is mostly going to be covered so you don't have to worry about it being perfect, it's just to give the idea that the character is sitting in a tall overgrown field of grass.

Around this point I also painted in some more rim light elements on the dog, along with adding in some collar details and changing tail position, so while not too noticeable it adds to the happy feeling of the illustration.

Foreground

For the FG I mainly used the stalk and wild plant brushes from Devin's brush pack listed above, and while this section is going to be blurred, you'll still be able to vaguely see the shapes.

For the FG I followed two rules, 1) the closer to my character the element was, the lighter brown tone it went and 2) the further away from my character the element was, the blurrier I made it. This helps to easily create field of depth in your illustration and gives a stronger sense of lighting and mood. To further establish my focal point I blurred a lot of the elements in this illustration while keeping my character sharp to reinforce this and draw the eye to the character, having the background become a secondary supporting detail that will boost and compliment my character.

For the blurring I used Gaussian Blur (which can be found under Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur), I also want it to be quite noticeable so I stay in the double digits on the strength scale as shown below, but you can go for a lower amount for a more subtle effect, it's all down to preference.

 

Motion blur is also another blur that you can experiment with in your backgrounds, it can be especially effective for moving things such as moving vehicles or animals, have fun experimenting!

Adding noise

One of the last things that I add to my illustrations is a noise filter layer, so create a new layer and go to the noise filter, which can be found under Filter > Render > Perlin noise. Below you can see my settings, I never stick to these settings so don't worry about remembering them exactly, have a play about and see what works for you! I love quite a strong noise filter to give a strong grainy appearance.

 

After you're happy with your settings click OK and then you can experiment with layer modes, this time I went for Overlay at 49% opacity.

Below you can see side by side a version with the noise filter and a version without. I love adding a noise filter to my illustrations as it gives your work more of a cinematic photography feel, helping it not look so digital and flat by adding some grain and texture, while the colour variation in the noise creating more colour harmony to your drawing.

Instead of noise you can also experiment with some texture pngs which can also be found on CSP's assets page, here's a few below that you can experiment with and use to explore the different layer properties that Clip Studio Paint offers (lighten, soft light and overlay are some of my favourite modes). Enjoy!

Finished!

Ta-da! You're done!

 

Blending modes, layer modes and pre-made brushes can be your best friends if you experiment and find out what works for you, they're a fantastic way to utilise your time so you can focus on lighting, mood and character in your illustration. I hope you enjoyed following me along, have fun creating!