1. About the article

This article is introductory on how to use Clip Studio Paint for presentations of architectural projects. In particular, how to use the program to present our projects with an aspect as if it had been done with traditional media. What we will look for is to give it an aspect as if they were made with markers on paper, following the tutorial we can obtain an image like the one below.

2. Introduction

In the architectural design we use the drawing in the design phase, which is where a shape is graphically molded through an expression of figurative features of it, in this phase we draw to record, project and communicate.

In this tutorial we will focus on communicating, that is, on making our ideas known to others. In our case, it will be an architectural project, that is, it is not yet built. To communicate it we will use the architectural drawing through Clip Studio Paint.

The instruments used are: MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, Clip Studio Paint and Astropad to draw on the iPad and be able to use the pressure to obtain different thicknesses of lines and strokes.

 

3. Canvas and Brushes

3.1 Canvas

 

The canvas that we will use will be the one that best suits us. Generally, we make digital presentations of our projects, so I will use a canvas with the dimensions of an A4 sheet in horizontal direction, that is, 420 x 297 mm with a resolution of 350 ppp and with the paper color activated and in white color .

For this exercise we are going to use some plans that we have previously digitized with any CAD program, we are not going to draw or project, we are simply going to communicate our project. Prior to importing our image, I have generated a group in the layers, working with a group helps us to be ordered.

I will use this project that I made a couple of years ago, it is a hotel on a ravine, it is an image in jpg format and it must have the same measurements as our canvas or approximate. As architects we must know how to handle the qualities of lines, so we have to plan them well so that the image we import into Clip Studio Paint can be seen with good quality.

As you can see, the image that we import as .jpg does not have great detail, only the project is what is furnished but the site is not, the trees are presented as circles and that will help us too.

Many times, when we import our architectural drawings, the lines with the finest quality tend to get lost. In this case, what I recommend is to duplicate the original layer and put it in Multiply (Multiplication), this we do two or three times, or until we are happy with how the drawing looks and then we join them in one with Merge with layer below (Merge with lower layer).

 

3.2 Brushes

 

We will use two brushes, the first one should be included in our Clip Studio Paint program and it is called Felt Pen (Felt Pen), we leave it as it is, we do not have to adjust anything, as it works perfectly. We will use this brush to redraw the trees and lines of the contour lines.

The second brush is a custom brush, I will show you what features it should have. What we are looking for with this brush is to recreate an alcohol marker type appearance, which has the characteristic that when we pass over and over it overlaps are created that increase the saturation of our strokes.

Once our brush is configured, which is based on a hexagon for the tip because sometimes we will give random points and in my opinion the hexagonal shape very similar to the markers and make it look interesting, we will proceed to the drawing of the trees and curves of level.

4. Layout

In a new layer and with the brush Felt Pen (Marker) we trace the trees. Here we can use any type of representation we want, but it is very important that they are closed, that is, one line or several, but that our tree is always a closed figure, we must not leave spaces in our layout.

This is the result of redrawing the trees and lines of the contour lines. By doing this, we give our presentation that traditional touch, as if we had done it by hand on paper and with a stylus. This used brush helps us a lot to achieve this effect and it is not necessary to trace the entire architectural project, which would take too much time; we only do this with some elements, at least when we work with plants, elevations and sections.

This layer, that of the lines of curves and that of our base drawing will always keep them up and both in Multiply mode (Multiply) and there is always a padlock, never forget it, the padlock on these layers is used to not modify or damage them if we get confused when we are working.

5. Painted

This is the longest part, but I am going to tell you about the process for the trees, and it is the same thing that we will do for everything we paint. In my case I did the same for the floor, the tennis court, the parking lot, the wooden deck and the bodies of water.

We started by filling in a new layer, as I mentioned. This will be below our trace layers and base drawing. We choose a light color, the layers of the colors will always be in normal mode.

Now, on our layer of the trees we select all the interior of our trees, so it is important that they are closed lines, that there are no empty spaces in the contours. Once we have selected what we want, we go to the layer where we put the color fill, we put a mask so that it only shows us the filled trees and we can work on them putting more colors.

 

The procedure to paint the trees will be the same as we do when we paint with markers, first we define where our source of lighting comes from, it would be better if it were always with the east-west orientation, but many times we have to define it at the point that more help us to express shadows that give us a greater understanding of the volumes. The light colors go first and we paint them with some darker color after always following our source of illumination. This applies to all layers of colors, always identify our source of lighting and color based on it, here it is important to play with the opacity of our brush.

Once finished, we should get something like that. Our trees begin to gain volume. We must do the same for each element.

We do the same for the remaining elements, bodies of water, tennis court, wooden deck, pavements and finally, remember that shadows will be projected on each of these elements, so be careful with putting them on. That will give a better quality to our drawing and the volume is always something that we can interpret, it tells us that it is closer, or further away, if something is below the ground or above.

In the following image, we can see what I was saying before, the shadows are projected on the elements, it is not necessary to be exact, only to communicate the depth to understand the presented project.

6. Final finishing

To get to the final finish, I first added in a new layer and, on the landscape layer, a gradient to change the tone a bit because the colors were too similar. Once the gradient is done, we set it to 20% opacity.

Finally, on top of all the layers, we created a new one, to this we added the Perlin Noise filter, which we found in the menu Filter> Render> Perlin noise (Filter> Render> Perlin Noise), and we added it with a scale of 5.0 or less. The important thing is that it is small so that it gives us the paper texture effect.

With the filter layer in Multiply mode (Multiplication) and the opacity of 16% we will obtain a finish like the following image.

That is the finish we are looking for. We can continue modifying and experimenting with more filters, once we are happy with the final image, we must export it to be able to use it in our presentation that we are preparing. Generally the most used formats are jpg and png.

This is the result we will obtain.

This has been a small introductory tutorial on this technique. I hope it has meet your expectations. Thank you!

 

Any questions, do not hesitate to write it here.

 

You can follow me on my Instagram @claudiozaldivar.

Also on YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/claudza

 

A little bit about me

I'm Claudio Zaldivar Araujo. Architect by the National Autonomous University of Mexico. I like to draw and look for new ways to present the architectural projects in which I work.