Hello! My name is Liz Staley and I’m a long-time user of Clip Studio Paint (I started using the program back when it was known as Manga Studio 4!). I was a beta-tester on the Manga Studio 5 program and for Clip Studio Paint, and I have written three books and several video courses about the program. Many of you probably know my name from those books, in fact. I write weekly posts on Graphixly.com and on CSP Tips, so be sure to come back every week to learn more Clip Studio Tips and Tricks from me!

 

If you love colored pencils but want to enjoy the convenience of creating digital art, Clip Studio Paint is the perfect way to achieve a traditional media look with the convenience of layers and undo!

 

In this article we will cover the following topics:

Finding Colored Pencil Brushes

Coloring with Digital Colored Pencils

 

Let’s get drawing

 

 

Finding Colored Pencil Brushes

First, I wanted to see if I could find a digital brush that mimicked my analog pencils, and I found a set that is just about perfect! The “REAL PENCIL Brushes” by CSP user .avi. are currently free and they behave very much like analog pencils.

With colored pencils you have a limited number of colors and that’s one of the limitations of the media. Having these color limitations is also a beauty of the medium, because you need to layer and combine colors to get a color you don’t have in a pencil. A limited palette can be a good thing instead of having access to every color imaginable! So I also installed a colored pencil color set as well.

To add the color set after downloading it, you need to go to the Color Set palette and then click “Add color set”.

Click on the downloaded color set in the Add Color Set window and then click “Add palette”.

Now we can start coloring!

Coloring with Colored Pencil Brushes

Before starting colors, I added a paper texture over top of my drawing and set it to Multiply and the opacity to about 80%. This will add to the look of the illustration.

When working with traditional colored pencils it is very important to start lightly and slowly build up the color over many layers. I used the “Real Pencil” from the set downloaded in the first section of this article and chose a color from the colored pencil color set, then started lightly laying down color on the drawing on a new layer.

 

After working with this particular pencil set for a bit, I did realize that the brush opacity was at 100, and the brushes layered and blended much better with that setting at around 80%.

 

Using a light pressure, go in one direction with strokes to lay down the first layer of color.

 

 

One thing that’s important for these tools is tilt sensitivity, which is definitely included in this set of pencil brushes! Depending on the tilt of your stylus, the line made becomes thinner or thicker - just like angling a real pencil! For these large areas of color I use the stylus nearly all the way tilted to the side to cover the most amount of surface area.

After laying down the first layer of color, I like to take the same color and go back over, lightly again, but making the strokes in a different direction to build up the color.

 

To add shading, I like to layer up several colors in the shadow areas instead of just choosing a darker version of the base color. For the skin I used brown, purple, and even a bit of pinks and red to bring some interest and life to the colors. I used the same process that I used for laying down the base color, going lightly over the area and changing the direction of the strokes with each layer of color.

 

 

Once the skin was done I moved on to the hair. Working in strokes from the top and bottom of the hair strands, I left a strip of white in the middle to act as the highlight for some shiny anime hair!

When coloring red I love to layer in orange and yellow into the main part and use a dark purple or blue for shading to provide awesome contrast and color variation. I just think it looks so good!

This is around the time when I noticed the opacity of my tools was at 100% and lowered it so I could get more color mixing. I added more yellow and orange around the hair highlight for a bit of pop. You can also see where I layered yellow over the green in the hat to make a yellow-green color.

I continued around the image, filling in each area and shading it just as I would with analog colored pencils. I did all the coloring on a layer underneath the pencil drawing layer, except for the eye highlights, which are on a separate layer above the drawing layer.

Conclusion

I am always surprised at just how easy it is to mimic traditional tools with Clip Studio Paint. Whether you like painting, pastel, or colored pencil, you can either make or find brushes that allow you to combine the convenience of digital with the look of traditional - the best of both worlds!

 

For more information on CLIP Studio Paint, please visit https://www.clipstudio.net/en or https://graphixly.com