Video tutorial and time-lapse:

Written tips here.

Setting up the tools

Before starting any art piece, one should select which tools they’re going to use. This is especially important when drawing traditionally.

 

 

That being said, CSP has a myriad of tools and assets you can use to create digital art that looks just like traditional, even more vibrant and creative.

 

 

Best of all, most of the tools are already on CSP or are free to get from the assets store, you can even create your own!

 

 

1. Custom Brushes

Let us start by creating simple pencil brushes. I’ll show you how to create your own brush quickly.

 

 

First let’s talk about pencils and their texture. Pencils are porous, which means they have spots where the graphite does not touch the paper. Think of it as a cylindrical pen with a hole in the middle, when you use it, you will have an empty circle with an outline.

Now let’s see what a pencil texture actually looks like.

This means that, to create a pencil brush, all you need to do is draw a texturized blob of paint.

To create a custom brush, you will first need to choose the correct type of canvas and the correct properties, otherwise you will end up with brushes that do not change color for example!

1. Create a new canvas

2. Select Gray from the Basic Expression Color menu

3. Click OK

For any brush creation, it is best to create them on a grayscale layer so that the colors transfer when you use them. Creating them on a color layer will make them have the same color you created them with therefore you won’t be able to change the color of the brush.

Now on a new layer grab a pen brush and draw a big blob of color. You can follow the steps below.

Now that we’ve created our Pencil brush, we need to register it as a material so we can use it.

That’s it your brush is now saved. Let’s get to the next step, creating your custom brush tool.

In this step you can add a custom texture or use the one that already comes with the pencil. Keep in mind that using the built-in texture means you cannot publish your newly created material.

Tip: You can create texture easily by taking photos of your surroundings.

You can grab the brush pack I created for this tip for Sketching, Colouring, and Texture, as well as this brush we’ve created here:

2. Custom Texture

Creating the custom brush was easy and fun, but this is even more fun! I’ll show you a quick trick you can use to create a custom texture for your art, first grab a cup of coffee for yourself.

For this step, I do recommend using a thick sheet of paper or watercolour paper.

Grab your paper, coffee, a spoon (or your fingers!), and a plastic sheet.

I find that thinking outside the box from time to time increases our creativity, so go ahead and experiment!

That’s it! You just created a customized paper texture.

You can use various drinks to create different textures. Have fun exploring!

Difference between different textures

In this section you can find some different textures and a short image comparaison. To find the most suitable texture for you, you have to try different textures and different layer modes for each texture, as the overlay mode may work for some while multiply works for others! Experimenting is key when it comes to finding the perfect texture for your art.

Some textures can change the contrast and strength of the color (how vivid they are), if that happens to you, do not fret, the solution is easy, just go to tone curve and adjust it slightly.

I will include a texture pack; you can use it with pencils or paper texture.

3. Hidden Features You Should Try

Clip Studio comes with a variety of tools and features you probably never even heard of!

Let me introduce you to 3 special features that can give your art the “Traditional Look” we’re aiming for.

Pencil Drawing Effect

To use his feature:

🌟Go to filter

🌟Select Effect

🌟Choose Pencil Drawing

BONUS Assignment

You can create a brush using textures as well! Why don’t you try figuring it out?

Let me know if you found the way!

Staging the Art

With traditional art you dont really have a choice when it comes to layering. You have to be especially mindful of light source and shadows, even more so before you even start sketching. This is mainly due to the fact that you dont get to erase as you’d like, after some time the paper itself becomes too thin to erase. This problem is easily dealt with by digital means using layers. Which is why I recommend using layers to separate your artwork so that erasing and changing things would be easy.

In some styles, the lineart layer is completely omitted, instead, some artists only use the sketch layer and either paint over it or hide it when they’re done.

1. Setting up Layers

To keep things organized, plan your artwork beforehand and prepare your layers.

2. Choosing your Color Palette

Coloring pencils come in various colors, however they’re mostly never saturated enough. And that’s what makes them special. This is why, to draw something that looks traditional, pastel colors are the way to go!

You can use Pinterest for inspiration on which colors go together well. You can also create your own color combinations or use specialized websites for this.

Here are 2 websites I use for color palette generation:

You can select a color palette and test it out on your canvas. You can always add more colors or change them later!

I recommend using Layer Comps to try different color combinations, this tutorial explains how to use the tool brilliantly:

 

 

Sketching, Base Colour, and Rendering

Now that we have our tools ready, we can comfortably start sketching our art.

Sketching

Using the Sketch brush, lay down the building blocks of your art lightly. You can lower the opacity of the brush or use it as is.

Base Colour

You can now use the lasso tool to select and fill in the colours. Use either the fill tool or a G pen with big size for this step.

Separate each shape on a new layer, this will make it easier for rendering later.

Layer Organisation

Before you start rendering, first organize your layers, create a group folder for each part of the artwork. For example, keep the character and the props on separate folders each.

 

 

You can further separate the character into body, hair, clothes and props. Do what suits you most, however, I highly recommend you at least separate the character from the props.

Rendering and texture

This step mainly depends on your art style; you can keep the artwork simple with minimal rendering or go all the way in with different brushes and textures to give it more life.

This is a list of brushes i used for this piece of work:

🌸Rough Pen by CSP

🌸Chalk by CSP

🌸Pencil Brush (From the brush creation part)

🌸Pencil Brush Pack (Scribling Pencil - link mentioned before)

🌸Dry Gouache by CSP

🌸Oil Paint by CSP

For a finishing touch you can choose either option from the texturing part above. I have tried multiple, and you can see the differences below.