Hi! Making a scene with foliage can sometimes seem a little frustrating and time consuming especially when you're working on a comic but this CLIP STUDIO PAINT tutorial is to show you a simple way of turning a few brushes and layers into a beautiful garden scene without taking up too much time.

 

The concept is to have four main layers to make up the foliage, the base, the shadows, the midtones and the light tones.

Ink Layout

Before even going into the foliage, we need to establish the layout of the scene and ink the most important parts, I tend not to ink where the foliage will be since I block it out with a solid colour. The G-PEN is my ultimate comic inking tool.

Colour Flats

Due to the shadow I know I'll have, I use a gradient for the ground, plus it's an easy way to give your ground some variation without trying to do individual grass. It also gives a sense of perspective as to what's further back and what's closer.

Element Shading

A bit more shading on the garden elements in order to establish a bit more the direction of the light and where some of the shadows will fall.

Blocking out foliage

I've decided where my foliage will be so I just a big pen to block it out and I use one of my favourite leaves brushes to touch up the edges of the solid blocks to give them a bit more leafy appearance. The greens I've used also slightly different for some variation. We even have some purple bushes.

Adding Shadow to the foliage

I love using the CLIP AT BELOW tool so for this step You can make another layer on top of the plant base layer and clip it to layer then use the multiply mode. Use your leaf brush and decide where to add the darker foliage. By using multiply, you can use the greens already on the canvas but they show up as darker.

 

It was the same concept with the ground but I used a textured watercolour brush. The ground and foliage where of course two separate base layers.

Adding Midtones to foliage

With the lighter colours, it's time lay down the midtones, already it looks like layered foliage because of the base and shadows underneath. That's why it's important not to completely cover the shadows or the base with your leaf brush. Also added a bit more shadow the ground.

 

CHANGING THE SIZE OF YOUR LEAF BRUSH MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE.

Adding light tones

The last layer to add the foliage is the where the foliage is lit up which will have the brightest tones. Use your chosen colour and then I like using the smooth watercolour brush to blend in the layer just a little.

 

I used a default poppy brush just to add a few poppies on the bush.

REMEMBER the layers at this point are all clipped to the base layer unless you want it otherwise.

Making the garden magical

I added a few more elements like sparks and some floating flower petals (Cherry petal brush) just to give the garden a bit more magic and make the scene less static. Using the Grassland brush in different shades of greens and different sizes give my ground a bit more texture.

 

The lights were made brighter by using the AIRBRUSH with the same shade of blue on a Add glow layer.

Lights and finishing touches

With the AIRBRUSH on a add glow layer, I added some light rays and added some light to the leaves to give them a bit of a glow. Also the shade needed a bit more of a blue tone to make it seem cooler and give it a bit more atmosphere.

 

AND here we go, a a base, a shadow layer, a midtone layer and a light tone layer to make some foliage.

 

BRUSHES AND PALETTE

Besides the leaves brush, most of the brushes I've mentioned are default CLIP STUDIO PAINT brushes.