I’m going to show you how to make a “gamut mask” or “palette mask” using nothing but a color wheel and Clip Studio Paint!

 

*I made this tutorial using CSP Pro 1, but the same principles should apply for any version.

 

 

Introduction

First, what's a gamut mask? The term comes from physical painting and printing, where artists only have so many pigments to work with. A 'gamut' is the set of all colors that can be mixed from a certain set of pigments. Painters and printers have been looking for 'wide' gamuts for a long time -- so they can make the widest variety of colors from the fewest number of base pigments or dyes. Some base-color sets you may have heard of are CMYK, RGB, or RYB.

 

 

One of the easiest ways of making a painting harmonious is to use color theory to limit the number of colors of your palette. The technique of covering up, or 'masking’ your reference color wheel also lets the artist see what intermediate colors can be mixed and still remain part of the cohesive palette. And in the physical world, where more pigments means more tubes of paint you have to spend money on, it’s important to know exactly how few pigments you can get away with.

 

 

In digital art, painters have access to every possible RGB color right out of the gate, which can sometimes feel overwhelming or make it harder to see relationships between colors. So let’s try gamut masking! Using this tutorial, you’ll make a general-purpose file you can change and adapt to your liking for future projects!

 

 

Part I: The Setup

In this tutorial, I’m using a color wheel image obtained from Björn Ottosson’s blog, showcasing the OKHSL color space. *(See usage note at end)

I like it because the OKHSL space has perceptually constant lightness and saturation per hue. Try out his comparative color picker here.

You can use whatever color wheel you like! Just one thing is important– it should gradually become more unsaturated toward the center of the wheel. This saves you some manual color mixing down the road.

 

 

To get started, follow this:

 

1. Open your color wheel in Clip Studio Paint. It will be the only layer.

 

2. Select the “Frame Border” tool (U), pick the shape or subtool you think is best. I’ll pick Polyline since I’m making a triangle. (HINT: If you want an elliptical/circle shape, choose “Rectangle frame”, click the wrench in the tool properties window, then the “Figure” submenu, then you should see the option to choose an ellipse shape. This is shown in the image below.)

3. Create the frame shape on the canvas over any section of the wheel. If it’s not quite right, choose the “Operation” tool (O) and adjust the rotation, corners, or size of the frame!

 

4. You’ll now see your frame border shape over the color wheel. Drag the color wheel layer into the Frame folder and it’ll be masked!

Here’s a look at what our layer structure should look like at the end.

That’s the very basics! Here’s some extra steps I took to make it even more helpful.

 

 

Extra Steps

*In the Frame folder, I added two correction layers: a Hue/Luminosity/Saturation and a Color Balance. The first is in case I want to work with darker/lighter tones. The second is if I want to apply a tint to my gamut while preserving the color relationships of the mask! eg: if I want to make a painting that’s overall blue, but still want colors that 'feel’ red, yellow, etc compared to the strongest blue.

 

*I’ve created a uniform neutral grey layer at the very bottom, so I can judge tones and colors without bias.

 

 

The final working setup how I like to use it:

With that mask, you technically have everything you need! For each new painting you want to make a palette for, just edit the shape of the Frame Border layer and change the adjustment layers to your liking. Then you can save it as your favorite image type to use for reference!

 

 

Aside: Changing Frame Type After the Fact

If you want to change your frame drastically— for example, changing a free-hand frame to a polyline— without making a new Frame folder, it is possible but a little esoteric.

 

Make sure the Frame mask is selected, then pick the Operation tool (O). This is how you would move corners/points around as described above.

 

Hit the Delete key on your keyboard. A pop-up will come up asking what you would like to delete.

Picking “Delete only border” will get rid of your Frame but keep all the layers and the folder they are in. Then draw a new frame with the Frame tool (U). As far as I have been able to tell this is the only way to do this as other delete options are greyed out for Frames specifically. (At least in my version)

 

 

Part II: How to Use It

Now I’ll explain some different ways to make use of your masked palette in CSP.

 

 

But first, an Important Note!

 

Now here’s where things get a bit different from real paint. Clip Studio Paint has perceptual color mixing, but because each real world pigment has unique properties that also change based on the medium, we can’t perfectly recreate paint mixing. Everything here is approximate to real life. Here’s the rule of thumb: You can’t mix a saturated color from unsaturated colors. Check your mixed colors against the gamut mask (adjust the lightness if you need to) before assuming they’re within gamut. Blending Modes in particular can make colors out of gamut!

 

 

1. Eyedropper

The easiest way to pick colors is… use the eyedropper directly on the mask! This is guaranteed to not exceed saturation limits.

Then use the Lightness slider in the Color Picker Sliders tab to make it lighter or darker.*

 

(*Yes, apparent chroma and saturation can change with lightness in most color spaces. this is one of those approximations.)

2. Blending

CSP has a built-in color mixing window! Pick some of the most saturated colors (in this case, blue-green, magenta, and yellow-green) and mix them with the color mixer tools to get a basic palette. It appears that the blender tool averages the colors, which means the results will not exceed the gamut, provided your gamut border isn’t a concave shape like a star, or separate parts.

3. Intermediate Color Palette

CSP also includes a fun little tab in the color picker called the Intermediate Color palette. Put whatever colors you want to mix in the corners, and it creates a spectrum of colors between them. It works by averaging, like the color mixer.

4. Rearrange into a Wheel

Making a palette mask reframes what colors are considered “warm” and “cool”, so I like to create a new color wheel to help me with the relationships.

Eyedrop colors at the corners and edges of your mask. Try to space them out equally along the perimeter. Then eyedrop the color at what looks like the center of the shape to place in the middle of your wheel as the “neutral” of your palette.

Part III: A Real Example

Here’s an exercise to try out using different palettes.

 

 

Sketch out the base of an illustration, then choose two notably different palette masks. Color your illustration twice: one for each mask. *Note that you are not obligated to use every color in your masked palette! Remember to also use a thoughtful value distribution by changing the lightness of your colors.

 

 

Here are two palette masks I chose along with some exploring of the values and relationships I did before starting my painting. The left can be considered a split complementary palette and the right an analogous palette.

(Note how for the right palette, the “neutral” color in the wheel is a green, while a grey on the outside is the closest we get to a purple.)

 

 

Then, after doing a value study of a photo of an egret that I took, I made two paintings with the two palettes.

Conclusion

I hope this tutorial was helpful for you! I'm not an expert in palette-making myself, but I wanted to make a tool that would be helpful to me as I practice.

 

I will upload a material with the layer structure from this tutorial, with a neutral grey background and correction layers as well! This space will be edited to include when I have done so.

 

 

Helpful Reading

Here’re some resources if you’re interested in learning more about palette masking and color spaces.

 

 

*Björn Ottosson’s blog post on digital color spaces (very in-depth)

*James Gurney: From Mask to Palette (third in a series; has links to the 2 other posts about gamut masking by him)

*HTML Color Codes (free tool with a drop-down menu of typical color harmony “shapes”)

 

 

*Usage of the color picker and OKLab color space by Björn Ottosson is permissible by his licenses here and here, respectively.