Introduction

Today I'll show you a few tips to greatly improve quality. These come from traditional drawing art. However, most pen tablets don't transfer your lines with 100% accuracy. ClipStudioPaint has some tools that can help you fix these problems. I'll show you how they work! :)

Pace

A crucial factor is pace.

Don't draw your lines too hastily - Seasoned beginners love to scatter their lines explosively across the canvas, achieving incredible speeds.

However, the loss of control is also enormous, and successful lines are at best lucky shots.

However, you shouldn't be too slow either, because with slow hand movements, a slight tremor in the hands becomes noticeable in all of us. This is a completely normal process and is called physiological tremor.

With graphic tablets and pen displays, this effect is amplified depending on the device. More on that shortly...

Direction

Also consider the direction in which you draw your lines. Professionals draw lines towards or away from their bodies...

...and rotate the canvas if necessary – [CTRL + SHIFT + Scroll up/down]

Going from..going to

Try to visualize the starting and ending points of a line and create the line along these coordinates.

Be aware that you essentially only use straight lines (straights), c-curves (c-curves), and S-curves (S-curves).

This principle also involves knowing the range of your lines. Different executions are required here.

You can draw short lines from the wrist, medium lines from the forearm, and long lines from the shoulder.

Countable Lines

The fewer lines, the greater the understanding of the subject and the more expressive the overall image – If it seems impossible for you to break down your subject into a few lines because you don't know which part is best represented as a straight or curve, where a part originates and where it ends, then you first need to gain knowledge about your subject.

Optimizing ClipStudioPaint for Your Pen Tablet - Introduction

Even if you implement the tips mentioned above, your lines in ClipStudioPaint may still be displayed incorrectly. This is often due to your pen tablets. Here's how you can correct the errors of your pen tablets with ClipStudioPaint's software magic.

Reduce Pen Jitter

Many pen displays and graphics tablets send slightly shaky lines to your graphics program despite delicate line work. Now, the question naturally arises: To what extent is the graphics tablet or the artist responsible for these wobbles?

 

 

You can find this out with the ruler test: Draw a line guided by a ruler on your pen tablet, and if this line is still slightly shaky, it really is due to your pen display.

You can counteract this in ClipStudioPaint by increasing the stabilization value – For graphics programs without a stabilizer, there are external applications for this – You can also determine exactly how high to set the stabilization value with the ruler test.

Pressure Sensitivity

It is equally crucial to calibrate the Pressure Sensitivity.

Pressure sensitivity refers to the interpretation of light to strong pen pressure. In the graphics program, you can assign different parameters based on this input.

For example, you can set your line to become thicker when you press harder or whether your opacity increases with higher pen pressure.

Now, it's possible that your pen display isn't entirely accurate here either, meaning you have to press extremely hard to achieve maximum opacity.

You can compensate for this in ClipStudioPaint using the Pressure Curve.

To do this, open Opacity Dynamics (Tool Property>Opacity Dynamics) and check the box for Pen Pressure.

The Output Axis describes when we have reached the maximum value of the parameter. In this case, it means 100% opacity. The Pen Pressure axis shows at what pressure this value is reached.

 

If you have to exert too much pressure to reach the maximum opacity value, you must set the end of the curve on the Pen Pressure axis to a value below 100%. E.g., 75 percent.

 

To do this, we create two control points by clicking on the curve and dragging them together at 75% Pen Pressure. Now we achieve maximum opacity with less pressure.

 

But what if the pen input is interpreted too gently, meaning you already reach maximum opacity with little pressure?

In this case, you can model the Pressure Curve as follows, and behold, the opacity behaves as it should:

The Minimum Value

And finally, one more tip. No pen reaches a value of 0 or 1% regarding its strength. So, if your artwork shouldn't look too digital, you should set the minimum value to, for example, 30% of the maximum value in the Brushsize Dynamics [Tool Property>Brush Size Dynamic].

I hope this was helpful and see you in the next video :)