🧩 Understanding Night Scenes

Night scenes aren’t just “dark versions” of daytime illustrations, they follow their own logic and behavior.

🟨 What defines a night scene?

Many elements help define a night scene. The most important ones are Light Source, colors and details. Everything else is complementary to the scene.

🔸Light source as the focus

At night, whatever emits light becomes the main point of attention. The light source illuminates any surface it touches, and some objects reflect the light they receive, becoming themselves light sources.

🔸Color shifts

At night, colors naturally shift toward blues, greens, purples and soft oranges or reds.

The sky can turn into a soft gradient that shifts towards those colors depending on weather, humidity and the type of light.

If the light is concentrated in the center of the scene, the gradient becomes radial instead of linear.

The edges stay darker (1️⃣) and the center becomes bright (2️⃣).

🔸Loss of detail away from light

Objects far from the light source lose clarity. They appear soft, blurry, or merge into the background.

🔸Key question: where is the light coming from?

Once you answer this question and decide on your light source, placing other elements will come naturally.

Decide your main light source and its direction before anything else.

🧩 Atmosphere

🟨 Fog

Fog spreads and softens any light. Streetlamps and windows glow more, edges become blurry, and colors fade gently.

My process for painting this scene is pretty simple. I start with a gradient background (BG 1), then add background trees, these are trees that are far away from the viewer, so I paint them in a grey-purplish color just to indicate the silhouette (BG 2).

I then add the middle ground (MG), and my focal point is on this plane, I used a 3D model for the car and added the lights using an airbrush and a glowing layer mode (I usually use Color Dodge or Glow Dodge).

Then moving to the foreground I add more trees, smaller for FG 1 and larger for FG 2, cuz they’re closest to the eyes.

I finished up with painting the moon and clouds on top of BG 1 layer and added fog in an unsaturated purple color between FG 1 and FG 2 as well as between FG1 and MG.

🟨 Rain

Rain scatters light through water particles, making reflections glow and backgrounds blur.

The focal point or subject (1) has sharper edges and a more saturated value, whereas the other elements (2) are blurrier and less saturated.

🟨 The Bokeh Effect

Bokeh is simply blurred circles of light. In photography, these circles come from the shape of the camera’s aperture (how wide or narrow the lens opening is).

This effect appears when light sources are out of focus. If the focus is on a subject, anything behind them or far in front of them becomes blurry.

Small lights in that blurry area turn into soft glowing circles.

Use this to make your focal point stand out and to add a soft, cinematic feeling to your illustrations.

You can easily create bokeh in Clip Studio Paint using Lens Blur or by blurring duplicated light layers.

1️⃣ To access the filter go to: Filter - Blur - Lens Blur

2️⃣ The parameters below affect how your blurry elements will look.

Strength is how blurry you want them to be; Shape gives you the option to choose a shape for your elements highlights, Intensity will make them appear brighter, Roundness controls how round you want the shapes to be and finally the Angle, which you’ll easily see its effect if you choose a triangular shape.

3️⃣ The shapes that you can choose from, ranging from triangle to Octagon.

Alright, now let’s see how you can quickly add the bokeh effect to your illustration.

1️⃣ Draw the elements you want to apply the bokeh to. In my case I wanted to add some fireflies floating around. So, I added ones behind the focal point and others in front of it.

2️⃣ Apply the Lens Blur, choosing the appropriate strength and intensity.

3️⃣ Duplicate the layer, and set the blending mode to Glow Dodge.

4️⃣ Adjust the opacity of the layers to your satisfaction.

5️⃣ Do the same for all the elements you want to bokeh.

Be mindful of the size of the lights, if they’re too small you may lose them when you apply the blur. If that happens, lower the Strength of the blur and they should be back.

🧩 Light Situations

🟨 Understanding Light Pollution

Light pollution is artificial light scattered by humidity, dust, and atmospheric particles.

🔸Where does light pollution happen?

Light pollution mostly appears in cities, where artificial lights brighten the sky and reduce the visibility of stars, galaxies and natural sky colors.

In the absence of Light Pollution, the sky becomes the focal point, emitting light from the different elements in it.

Elements like the moon, stars and galaxies contribute to the illumination of the sky.

🔸City Vs Countryside

In the complete absence of artificial light, stars, galaxies and the sky glow are fully visible 1️⃣.

As light pollution rises, the sky slowly loses detail from 2️⃣ → 3️⃣. The Milky Way fades and smaller stars disappear.

By 4️⃣, only the brightest stars remain, and the sky develops a warm urban glow.

At 5️⃣, strong city light fills the sky, and almost all stars fade.

Light pollution also affects the horizon, making it appear warm and bright due to concentrated light at ground level.

It also changes how we perceive light, making halos and glows appear around bright sources.

🟨 Aurora

🔸What is the Aurora?

🔸Aurora Colors

Auroras often blend two colors at once, usually green and pink, but sometimes blue or other variations.

They naturally form smooth vertical gradients.

To draw Aurora, start anywhere from the top of your canvas and drag your pen to the center back of your painting. My brush (link bellow) is designed to have a narrow end, to simulate the depth of the painting. You can then adjust using free transform or liquify to make it more into perspective.

🟨 Bioluminescence

Some fungi, plants, and even certain algae emit faint natural glows. They’re often found near roots, rocks, the base of trees, or along the shore and in deep water.

In the world there are some creatures that naturally emit light. Fireflies are the most commonly known ones. Some sea creatures also emit light, specifically in the deep sea where light can hardly reach.

Tiny specks of light create motion and life. Scatter brushes work well for this, especially around trees and grass.

🟨 Mythology

🔸Spirits, Ghosts & Fairies

Spirits are often shown with a glowing body, while Fairies typically have glowing dust or particles floating around them. Ghosts are mostly transparent with a glowing edge.

🔸Magical Runes

In daylight Runes look like normal carvings or markings.

At night, runes glow softly emitting faint light.

You can use thin lines to draw random symbols, then duplicate the layer and apply Add (or glow dodge) layer mode for a subtle effect.

🧩 Painting a Magical Night Scene

🟨 Sketching

For this piece I wanted to draw a character holding a firework and looking at the scene with a smile. To incorporate the night elements, I will add a city in the background as well as stars, moon and clouds in the sky. So, for sketching I kept it loose just to block in the ideas.

🟨 Main Elements: FG, MG and BG

You can start by placing some colors that are not too saturated and complement each other. Since this is a night scene, the main colors will mainly be the shades of blue.

Build your scene with the focal point in mind.

Start with big shapes, separate elements into foreground, middle ground, and background.

You can switch to Grayscale to verify your values.

When painting in grayscale, the closer an object is to the viewer the darker it is. The further away the object is, the foggier, lighter and less detailed it is.

Using values help us identify what’s closer to the screen and what the focal point is.

🟨 Light Sources

We can Identify 3 main light sources, the Moon, the Galaxy and Stars, and the firework in the character’s hand.

Then, we have 2 secondary light sources, the city behind and the sky itself as it reflects the lights around it.

Establishing this knowledge of where light is coming from and what it affects will help with the rendering process.

🟨 Adding details

You can use the city brush (see next section) to add buildings. Then adjust them using Mesh transform to suit your perspective. Or you can draw them by hand for a personal touch.

I added the city buildings in the same manner then I painted the sky adding the stars, galaxy and the moon.

I roughly painted my character in color, then duplicated the background gradient and added it on a multiply layer with lowered opacity on top of my character to blend it with the background.

Now I applied the bokeh effect on the buildings to make them blurry and glowing. I also lowered their opacity slightly to make them lose details and focus as they’re far in the background.

Then I made some adjustments to my character using the liquify tool and added some fog to the lower part of the buildings as well as some clouds in the sky to finish my piece.

And that’s my process! I did the same thing for all paintings in this tutorial.

I have to admit some turned out better than others, but overall, it was a fun experience =)

🧩 Brushes

Here you will find the brushes I used throughout this tip, and as a bonus I’ll teach you how to make your own aurora brush.

🟨 City Brushes

These are some brushes I found very useful for painting cities and city lights.

🟨 Nature Brushes

For clouds I used multiple brushes as well as CSP brushes.

I used a 3D model for the car in the Fog section.

For trees, foliage, grass and bushes, i used a mixture of Clip Studio brushes and some custom ones.

I used the Leaves and Grass brushes as well as the Ground one in many of my paintings.

I found this Moon brush very handy, i just had to duplicate the layer to make it glow softly.

The Fairy brush can be found here.

🟨 Night Sky Brush Set

For stars, galaxies and special effects, I used the CSP Sparkle brush and also created my own set, you can find it here.

🟨 Making the Aurora Brush

Let’s make this brush!

Start on a new square grayscale canvas with a transparent background.

1️⃣Create the brush tip: We’ll use the soft airbrush to make a vertical line and then make it narrow by transforming it.

2️⃣Erase the top part: Since the Aurora typically has a transparent upper body, slightly erase the top part using the Soft Eraser tool to get that effect.

3️⃣Duplicate and adjust: Duplicate the layer and move it below the original layer. Then apply a Gaussian Blur to it and transform it to make it wider. This ensures the edges are soft and blurry.

4️⃣Merge and Save: Now merge the two layers and register the new layer as Image Material (Edit → Register Material → Image). Make sure to check the “Use for brush tip shape”.

That’s it for the brush tip! Let’s now make our brush.

1️⃣ Duplicate a pen brush (any will do) and give it a new name (Aurora Brush, for example).

2️⃣ Click on the new brush’s Sub Tool Detail Button and in the Brush tip setting, we’ll add our brush tip.

3️⃣Select the Material tab and click the add button, then, search for your brush tip and add it. You can now test out your new brush.

4️⃣ Adjust the parameters of your brush until it looks like northern lights. You can experiment with the settings or use my settings. I recommend changing the BG color of your canvas to a dark hue so you can better see what you’re doing.

Now test it out and adjust as needed!

My 3 aurora brushes are included in my Night Sky Brush Set above.

🧩 Timelapses

Here are some timelapses. It doesn’t always start pretty, but trusting the process will get you there! I hope you learn something from this tip and that these timelapses are helpful for you.

Sometimes I start directly by laying colors, and sometimes I sketch my ideas first.

Having custom brushes cuts down a lot on the time it takes to paint stuff, but it’s also fun to sometimes just paint them anyway. Do what works for you, use brushes if you want and paint manually if you’re not a fan of brushes.

If I have a clear idea of what I want to paint, I lay down colors directly without sketching. This works best when I don’t have to worry about too many details and still get the point across.

Using layer modes and filters help make your art pop. I highly recommend you get familiarized with Clip Studio Paint tools, there are a variety of tools that can help take your art to the next level.

🧩 Conclusion

Night scenes are all about light.

Once you understand how light behaves at night, you can create any mood you want: peaceful, magical, mysterious or dramatic.

Experiment with glows, silhouettes, color shifts and atmosphere to find your favorite style.

If you found this tip helpful, please give it some love ♥

Your feedback, whether positive or negative is highly welcomed. I truly wish to improve the way am making these tips, and I can’t do that if I don’t know what am doing wrong or right =)

Thank you for reading this far ~

ScriblingArt