Illustration with Floral Decoration

When creating an illustration, adding floral decoration can be an interesting idea. We can include elements such as flowers, leaves, or plants to enrich the composition of the illustration. Besides enhancing the visual appeal, floral decorations can also help guide the viewer’s focus toward the main character. Therefore, I’d like to share a few tips that I usually use, since I often create illustrations like this to decorate my artwork.

1. Preparing the Thumbnail or Silhouette

First, plan the thumbnail or silhouette. This step helps determine the overall composition of the illustration. Before moving on to decorating the image with flowers, you should first decide the position of the character and the empty spaces around them. These empty spaces will later serve as the placement for the floral decoration.

Key reasons why thumbnailing is important:

1. It helps you plan where the main focus of the illustration will be placed.

2. It allows you to check whether the subject remains clear when the image is viewed from a distance.

3. It helps you estimate where empty spaces will be available for adding decorations later.

---

In this example, the canvas is divided into a 3×3 grid. This type of grid is commonly used in composition because it helps artists place the subject in a way that feels more balanced and natural.

 

By looking at the silhouette inside the grid, it becomes easier to adjust the size and position of the character. Sometimes the character can be centered, but in other cases placing them slightly to the side or making them larger can create a more interesting composition.

 

This method also helps you intentionally leave certain areas empty, which can later be used for decorative elements like flowers, leaves, or other ornaments without making the illustration feel too crowded.

2. Line Art

Once the composition planning is ready, the next step is to proceed with the line art as usual. However, there are a few things to keep in mind at this stage to make the process easier and keep the illustration more organized.

A. Divide the line art into three parts

Before starting the line art, you can first divide your layers into three main folders: foreground, midground, and background. The character will be placed in the midground.

Anything that appears behind the character should be placed in the background folder, while anything that appears in front of the character or is not part of the character (in this case, the butterflies) should be placed in the foreground folder. You can also rename the folders or assign color labels to them so they are easier to find later.

Planning this from the beginning has several advantages. It makes editing much easier because you already know where each element is located. It also helps a lot during the coloring and finishing stages, since coloring often depends on controlling the values of different elements. If you don’t organize this early on, the process can become much more difficult later.

B. Drawing The Character

For now, we can ignore the floral decorations. Since… when starting an illustration, the first thing to focus on is the main subject, not the decorations. Because of that, when working on the character’s line art, make sure the character can stand on its own as the main focus, even without any supporting elements.

In character illustrations, the viewer’s attention is usually drawn to the face, so it’s a good idea to place more detail around the head area, such as the eyes, nose, mouth, and hair. In this particular illustration, the clothing is not meant to be the highlight, so I kept the outfit details simpler.

C. Drawing the Floral Decoration

Decorate the empty areas. If you want to decorate in front of a character, don't let it distract the focus by distracting from the face or making it more visible to the camera.

a. Using Asset brush

By the way, since Clip Studio Paint has a large library of flower assets, so I’ll be using those for the decorations. These is the asset I used for this illustration.

b. Background

Now it’s time to add the decorations. First, plan where the floral elements will be placed, both behind and in front of the character. In the background, there is some empty space, so this area can be used to place flowers on the left and right sides of the character’s head. Since these elements are in the background and appear farther from the viewer, their size should be smaller. You can also draw the line art thinner to help create a stronger sense of depth.

c. Foreground

Next is the foreground area. Here, I’m using the same type of flowers and brushes as the ones in the background. Since these flowers are closer to the viewer, their size can be made larger, and the line art can also be drawn slightly thicker.

 

However, I didn’t make the flower line art thicker than the character’s. This is because I want the character to remain the main focus, so the flowers in the foreground don’t become too overpowering.

3. Base Color

Next, we move on to the coloring stage. I separate the layers into three categories: base color, shading, and lighting, so the process is easier to manage.

For the base color palette, try not to choose colors that are too dark or have extremely high saturation. For example, if you want something to appear black, avoid using a pure black like #000000, because there won’t be any darker value left to use for shading later. Using slightly lighter or softer colors will give you more flexibility when adding shadows in the next stage.

In the base color stage, you can start applying the basic colors to your illustration. Here, I also want to share a small tip, since I’m using flower template brushes and there’s a specific way I usually color them. Since, not every template brushes comes with line art only.

First, you can draw the flowers using a template brush. After that, duplicate the flower so you have two layers.

 

The top layer will be used as the line art. Go to Edit → Convert Brightness to Opacity, and the lighter areas will automatically disappear, leaving only the darker parts as the line art.

 

The bottom layer will be used as the base color. Lock the transparent pixels on that layer, then color it as you normally would. You can use tools like the bucket tool, brush, or lasso tool.

 

This way, you can easily recolor your template brush to match your own color palette.

4. Shading

First, let’s talk about value. Value refers to how light or dark an area is in your drawing. Controlling value is important because it helps create depth, focus, and volume in an image. When you arrange values properly, viewers can immediately understand which objects are closer, which are farther away, and where the main focus of the scene is.

 

Usually, objects in the foreground have stronger contrast and clearer values. The midground has moderate contrast, while the background tends to have lighter values and lower contrast. This difference helps separate the layers of your image and creates a sense of distance.

 

In digital art, artists often start by checking the artwork in grayscale to see if the value structure already works well. If the value balance is clear in grayscale, the final colored image will usually look more solid and easier to read.

The first step in shading is deciding the main direction of the light source. In this illustration, I placed the light coming from the upper left, which is why the darker areas mostly appear on the right side.

 

I usually start shading with a gray multiply layer. While doing this, I check the values by turning on a black color layer so the image appears in grayscale. This helps me see whether the light and dark areas are balanced.

 

Ideally, elements that are farther away such as the background behind the character should appear slightly more faded because they are further from the viewer. I’ll try to add that effect later during the finishing stage with color grading.

To add more detail to the shading, you can also include bounce light, which is light reflected from the surrounding areas around the character. You can add this using a soft airbrush so the density stays low and the effect doesn’t look too strong or distracting. This helps the lighting feel more natural and subtle.

5. Lighting

Next is the lighting stage. Before adding the lighting effects, I first apply a color grading layer using an orange color set to Multiply to create a late-afternoon atmosphere.

I lower the opacity to around 60–80% so the effect isn’t too strong.

After that, I create a new layer with the Add (Glow) mode to add the lighting. Since the main light source was set earlier to come from the upper left, the strongest light will appear on the upper-left side of the character. I just use the same template flower brushes here to make that shape.

I also soften the edges of the light shape slightly using the blur tool. You can add other lighting effects as well, such as flares, particles, or custom brushes, to make the illustration look more dynamic and visually interesting.

Since there are still more empty area at the back, you can also add more foliages. Just make it like a silhouette with solid color and make sure choose the lighter value than the object in front of them.

Next, we do some finishing on the background to create a stronger sense of depth. Since this area is farther from the viewer and located behind the character, add a soft white gradient starting from the character’s shoulders and fading upward. This helps create the feeling of distance.

You can also add another orange Add (Glow) layer, but make the color more faded than the elements in the foreground so the background feels further away. Additionally, you can include some extra floral decorations in silhouette form to add more layers to the scene and strengthen the depth effect.

For the butterflies in the foreground, add a soft white airbrush around the area so they stand out more from the back. This subtle glow helps draw attention to them without making them too distracting.

6. Filters

Lastly, the filter. This step is optional, since not everyone likes adding filters to their illustration. I personally like using them because they can give the image a more cinematic camera feel.

First, merge all the layers, then duplicate the merged layer. The duplicated layer is the one that will receive the filter.

 

Since the main focus is the character’s face, apply blur to the surrounding areas. You can use Filter → Blur → Gaussian Blur and adjust the blur intensity as needed.

 

After that, erase the blur around the face area so the original layer underneath remains visible. This will keep the face sharp while the surrounding areas appear blurred.

Result

And here is the final result. It’s fairly simple because I used template brushes to decorate the flowers, which saves a lot of time compared to drawing the floral line art manually from scratch.

Here’s another example of the step-by-step coloring process. However, the most important thing I want to point out for making this type of illustration easier is separating the background, midground, and foreground from the beginning.

 

Doing this will make the coloring and editing stages much easier later on.

If you're interested in using floral decoration for a romance-genre webtoon, you can check out my other posts or watch my tutorial video on my YouTube channel.

Alright guys, that’s all for this post. I actually share quite a lot about my experience creating webtoons, and I also upload several videos on my YouTube channel. Feel free to stop by and check it out if you’re interested!

---