《Easy for beginners to master! Hand-drawn colored pencil style flower illustration》
This time, the theme is "hand-drawn style flowers and plants".
Although CLIP STUDIO PAINT (CSP) is often used for drawing anime-style illustrations and comics, it is actually very adept at creating illustrations that imitate traditional pigments!
In this article, I will first briefly introduce the pencil brushes used and easily grasped flower shapes, and then demonstrate how to draw colored pencil style flower illustrations. This style looks relatively freehand and has a doodle feel, making it simple to draw and easy for beginners to master!
✧ How can I use flower illustrations?
Besides simply being a finished illustration, do flower illustrations have other uses?
Of course!
Here are some application examples; flower illustrations and other still-life illustrations actually have more uses than you might imagine!
Character illustration backgrounds
Greeting card illustrations
SNS banner backgrounds
Web design illustrations
Poster design
Cover (books, videos, etc.) illustrations
Others, such as custom cups and saucers, etc.
Below, we will officially start drawing a hand-drawn colored pencil style flower illustration. You are welcome to try it out with me!
【Brush Material Introduction】
The brush materials used this time are from the following set:
The main ones used in this demonstration are:
"Yowata Pencil Normal x4": The main brush for drawing lines
"Yowata Pencil Slanted Normal x4": Can simulate tilting a pencil to draw wider strokes
📝Note
Since my drawing tablet device does not come with a tilt function, the resulting effect may be slightly different from yours, but this has little impact on the overall image. If your drawing tablet has a tilt function, feel free to pay attention to how the tilt of your pen affects the brushstrokes when drawing!
For instructions on how to install brushes, please refer to the official help below:
【Introduction to Flower Shapes - Simplification for Sketching】
Although reference photos will be used in the demonstration below, I still want to briefly explain the classification of common flower shapes here to make it easier for beginners to extract and simplify flower shapes from photos.
A. Wheel-shaped flowers
With a short corolla and only one layer of petals, looking relatively flat, such as daisies.
B. Bell-shaped
With a tall corolla and a wider base, such as tulips.
C. Funnel-shaped
With a tall corolla and a narrower base, such as morning glories.
D. Multi-petaled flowers
Such as peonies, roses, etc. Beginners are advised to prepare reference materials before drawing these types of flowers to understand the angled shapes formed by overlapping petals.
E. Others
Such as "butterfly-shaped" (orchids), "urn-shaped" (fuchsia), "tube-shaped" (honeysuckle), etc.
Beginners are advised to prepare reference materials before drawing these types of flowers to accurately depict their structure.
📝Note
The above is not a complete botanical classification introduction, but rather a generalization of flower shape categories that beginners will find easier to grasp. If you are interested in botany, please be sure to search for more information elsewhere!
【Start Drawing!】
1. Find a reference photo
Please start by finding a suitable photo from your own collection! The photo below was taken by me in a flower garden during a trip.
Of course, you can also search in some online free image libraries, but please be sure to pay attention to the website's copyright statement and comply with its regulations.
2. Background base color
In works mimicking traditional art materials, I usually fill in a light base color first, instead of using a pure white background. This simulates the color of actual common drawing paper.
🔧Method
Use the fill tool → Select a light grayish-yellow color → Click with the left mouse button or drawing pen on [Layer 1] (Shortcut: Alt+Delete).
3. Sketch
For beginners who lack confidence in sketching shapes, you can first roughly draw a simple shape for reference.
🔧Method
Add a new layer above the base color layer → Set its blending mode to "Multiply" → Set the layer color in the layer properties (CSP's default setting is blue) → Reduce the layer's opacity as needed.
✍️Drawing
Please directly refer to the photo data and the previous section to outline a simple shape.
The key to drawing is to find the position of the "flower center" (indicated in green in the diagram below).
Petals grow out from the flower center in a disk shape.
The stem is also connected to the flower center, and then the branches and leaves are drawn. For leaves, you can first draw the central vein to grasp their position.
If drawing more than one flower, you can also visualize their approximate positions at this stage.
In the example below, due to the full bloom of the rose and the shooting angle, I simplified the petal section into three layers of disk shapes. The center point of all disk shapes is the same flower center.
📝TIPS
It's fine if the composition differs from the reference image.
You can use the partial selection and free transform functions to adjust the size of different parts.
🔧How to adjust shapes
Use the lasso tool → Select the area you want to change → Click the icon shown in the figure below (Shortcut: Ctrl+T) → Enlarge/reduce/rotate the part as needed.
4. Line art
Don't worry if the lines you draw are incomplete. The focus of this style is "freehand", and it's perfectly fine even if you don't draw every single petal exactly as in the reference photo!
🔧Method
Add a new layer above the base color layer and below the sketch layer → Draw the line art on this layer.
🎨Color selection
For beginners, I recommend starting with dark lines.
Black, dark gray, and dark brown are all easy-to-master colors suitable for the lines of the entire illustration.
Alternatively, you can also choose line colors based on the color of the flower, for example, using dark red on pink petals, or gray or light blue on white petals, etc.
For the line color of the stem and leaves, I would suggest using dark green or darker shades of blue or purple.
🖌️Lines
One of the characteristics of the brush used this time is its very clear feedback to pen pressure.
Stronger pressure produces more solid lines; lighter pressure results in blurry, lighter colors. This variation can make your image richer!
If you want to draw line art with greater line variation, feel free to try using strong lines in darker areas of the image (e.g., the base of the corolla); and lighter lines in brighter areas (e.g., areas of petals hit by light).
📝TIPS
The horizontal edges of the petals follow the outer edge of the disk in the sketch (blue and purple parts in the diagram below)
The vertical edges grow from the flower center (orange part in the diagram below)
✍️Correcting lines
To maintain the pencil texture, when you need to correct lines, I recommend keeping the pencil tool selected and setting its color to "transparent" to achieve an eraser function!
Finally, I chose to use brown for the flower parts and grayish-blue for the stems and leaves; it's fine if the lines are not connected.
5. Coloring
Now for the coloring part! At this point, I will hide or delete the sketch layer, then add a new coloring layer below the line art layer.
🖌️Brush settings and selection
First, draw the object's base color. For the base color and some wider areas, consider using "Yowata Pencil Slanted" for quick coloring.
Next, draw the bright and dark areas. To simulate the colored pencil effect, I recommend using a finer brush to create brushstrokes.
In terms of brush size numbers, the brush size variation for the entire work is around ±25%, but this is not an absolute rule; you can make larger variations to see if you like them.
✍️Brushstrokes
Petals: Please follow the direction from the flower center to the edge of the petals when drawing. As for the line shape, both straight lines or curves following the petal shape are acceptable.
Leaves: Since they are less primary objects, you can draw them either more realistically or more simply.
For example, dividing the leaf into two parts following the vein direction (part A in the example diagram), or directly applying color with brushstrokes in the same direction (part B in the example diagram), both are acceptable.
📝Note
You don't necessarily need to fill in all the color; leaving some blank spaces can enhance the hand-drawn feel!
6. Background
This is not a mandatory step, but if you wish to add more elements to the background to enrich the image, this section will offer some suggestions.
🔧Method
Add a new layer below the main flower layer.
To avoid stealing focus from the main subject, you can use colors with lower saturation and higher lightness (i.e., colors that are closer to gray and lighter). It's also acceptable to just draw lines without coloring.
In the example diagram, I referenced parts of the surroundings and placed them in the background, also slightly arranging their positions.
Additionally, you can also add some background colors.
Adding a simple frame can also enrich the image. I used the following auto action to easily add a white frame:
🔧Method
Select white → Choose the base color layer → In the Auto Action sub-window, select the "Sticker Outline" action and click the button → Set parameters as shown in the figure below (Draw inside, Line thickness 100px (depending on your image size), Expansion type: Square corner) → Move the newly added layer to the very top of all layers.
7. Post-processing
In the material set used this time, the author provides a layer group for paper texture adjustment, which, when added, can simulate the texture of drawing paper, looking very nice! However, this is not a mandatory step; for example, if you want to use the drawn flowers on a holiday card, you might not need to specifically emphasize the paper texture effect. Let's take a look at the effect after adding the paper texture!
🔧Method
Drag the layer group from the Material palette to the canvas → Place the layer group at the topmost position → Adjust the material's opacity and scaling ratio using the object operation function as needed.
In addition, you can also search for other paper textures in the Material palette.
Entering "paper" and "texture" will help you find a considerable number of beautiful materials!
8. Done!
【Conclusion】
Thank you for reading this far!
As an additional reference, the image on the right below is another flower illustration drawn using the same steps, easily achieving the same colored pencil style as the demonstration above!
The third image uses shades of the same brown hue to create an illustration, doesn't it have a different flavor?
And finally, using only black lines, the same drawing method can also simulate a charcoal pencil effect!
What do you think of this tutorial?
Feel free to leave a comment and let me know! I hope this tutorial was helpful to you.
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