Introduction

Today we will look at how we can imitate the graphical qualities of traditional media using Clip Studio Paint's Sub Tool Details, templates, and presets, as well as by creating our own brushes and textures.

Presets for Traditional Media

The "Round Watercolor Brush" excellently mimics the behavior of a watercolor brush. With the Multiply blend mode set, it looks as if you are laying wet brush strokes over a layer of dry paint. Furthermore, a texture is set to simulate the surface of real drawing paper. It also features a "Watercolor Border" like real watercolors.

Ink pens are characterized by their consistent opacity; tonal values in this medium are achieved by relating fine to coarse strokes.

Pencil tools, on the other hand, offer high pressure sensitivity in terms of opacity, as tonal values are built up slowly with graphite pencils.

Introduction: Creating Oil Paintings with Custom Brushes

Clip Studio Paint's Oil Paint Brush already proves to be a well-calibrated tool. Its blending behavior comes quite close to the oil paint experience. I now want to customize the brush for my needs without altering the original preset.

Therefore, I duplicate the preset by right-clicking > duplicate Sub Tool and renaming it. Now we have created an independent subtool and can make as many changes as we like.

In the original, the oil brush was set to opaque, meaning the strokes are completely solid. Real oil paints are transparent, semi-transparent, or opaque depending on the pigment. I recommend lowering the opacity slightly so you can blend the colors better.

By the way: You can also display every setting in the Sub Tool Detail palette in the Tool Property window. To do this, simply click the fields next to the respective settings.

I also want to change my brush tip, as I dislike working with a round brush and it doesn't match the brush tip I would traditionally use. The pen tip is crucial for the appearance of your strokes and lines.

Painting and drawing programs like Clip Studio Paint stamp the imprint of the pen tip at intervals we set, creating the illusion of a stroke or a line, depending on the spacing and angle at which they are arranged.

I could now choose a ready-made preset from Clip Studio Paint, which can be found under Brush-Tip > Material, but I have a very specific brush tip in mind and will create it now.

Creating a Brush Tip in Clip Studio Paint

You can design pen tips yourself by creating a layer and setting its expression color to gray in the Layer Properties.

You can draw on this layer with various brush tools or subtract parts from a shape.

I like to define my brush tip shape with one of the Selection Area tools.

When I'm satisfied, I register my shape under Edit > Register Material > Image and select > Use for Brush Tip Shape in the dialog box. I set the save location to Image Material > Brush.

Once set, I can now select it under Brush-Tip > Material.

If your stroke and its contour are not closed, the gap between the stamps may not be narrow enough. This can be adjusted under the Stroke tab in the Gap setting.

For the entire composition, I want to use 2 brushes. This one should be a brush with a lot of paint application. In painting, this is called a wet brush or wet media and is used in areas where the paint is meant to cover the canvas and distract from it. Here, the viewer should get the illusion of a true subject or object.

Creating Brush Tips from Traditional Media

As a second subtool, I need a dry brush with a low paint application that allows the canvas texture to show through. The technical term for this is Dry Brush.

For this, we need a brush tip that is less closed, opaque, and more textured.

Therefore, I duplicate my Oil Paint Wet Brush and rename it to Oil Paint Dry Brush.

Instead of digitally creating a brush tip, in this case, I want to use traditionally created brushstrokes: Instead of oil paint, I'll use India ink and a piece of paper towel and make a few strokes on textured paper.

Afterward, these are photographed well-lit from the front, from above. Alternatively, you can scan them.

After the photos are imported into Clip Studio Paint, I separate the strokes from the background using a Tone Curve, which can be found under Edit > Tonal Correction > Tone Curve.

I then remove the background under Edit > Convert brightness to opacity.

Now I register the brush tip under Edit > Register Material > Image, select "Use for brush tip shape" in the dialog, and set the save location to "Image Material" > "Brush".

Now the new brush tip can be loaded into our new brush by selecting "created Material" under Material.

Crucial for this brush shape is to select "Direction of Line" in the Angle Dynamics. Now, the shape we created will always follow the direction of the pen stroke.

If you want to add a little more variation to the contour of the brushstroke, you can also set a low value for Random. This slightly shifts each stamp on its axis of rotation. Depending on the orientation of your brush shape, you should set "Direction of applying" to horizontal or vertical.

I lower the brush density slightly so that the color is not completely opaque, and I add pen pressure and model a gentle curve for it, so that the opacity of the color goes along with the pen pressure.

In the Stroke category, I set a low value for Gap, so that the spacing between the stamps is not too large.

Now I also select a texture, as with dry brush, the canvas should show through. I really like the Clip Studio Preset Canvas and I set a value of about 70, so that the effect is visible but not too intrusive.

Demo: Oil Painting with Traditional Brushes

The largest shapes can be selected with a Selection Area tool and filled with the Bucket tool.

Then I work my way from the large shapes to the small ones with my Wet Brush.

To imitate the feel of traditional media, I need to pay great attention to the edges of my shapes and create a contrast from soft transitions to roughly placed brushstrokes.

As an interesting addition to the brush tools, you can use Clip Studio Paint's various blending tools to add more contrast or reduce information in an image area. Alternatively, you could also select areas with the selection tool and apply a filter to them.

When I'm satisfied, my dry brush comes into play. With it, I fade out my composition and apply some large brushstrokes, because in this area the strokes should be perceived as such. I can also use this brush to render details above my wet media layer.

If you still lack texture, I can recommend either dragging a texture from the program's Material folder into the layers, or one that you might have found online or photographed yourself.

Make sure that it has previously been converted as an Image Layer, which you can do by right-clicking on the layer > Convert Layer and selecting Type "Image Material Layer".

Afterward, you just need to select the "Overlay texture" mode in the Layer Properties. Adjust the opacity until the result looks believable.

The final result then looks like this

This brings us to the end of this tutorial. I hope this was helpful, and if you want to learn more about Clip Studio Paint, I will now show you more videos.