This tutorial is made mainly for beginners, where we will see the simplest tools that clip studio gives us to make our work easier.

 

We will see what guidelines are important to keep in mind when drawing an adorable creature, they do not necessarily have to be real animals, they can also be creatures totally from fiction and fantasy movies.

 

 An animal or creature that just by seeing it can express what it feels, that has a very expressive figure will make it a unique creature.

 

CANVAS CREATION

The measurements of the canvas will depend on each one, in my case I put these, it will vary according to the drawing we want to make, choosing a size that suits the animal to be drawn, if it is large or small, and if we plan to add a large background. You have to give a good space to the drawing, but not too much.

BRUSHES

I use

"REAL PENCIL" for the sketch

"MARU BRUSH" for flat colors

And a brush downloaded from clip studio assets:

https://assets.clip-studio.com/es-es/detail?id=1883096

REFERENCES

References are one more tool when drawing, we can take as a reference all kinds of things, drawing styles, perspectives, backgrounds, skin, fur, eyes, etc.

If the idea in your mind is not totally clear, or you want to improve it, do not hesitate to look for references, these will make you grow as an artist, the internet is full of references

SIMPLE FORMS

Simplifying an image, an object, a character, or an animal as much as possible will help you a lot when it comes to understanding its structure and starting with the drawing.

Once we have in mind what to draw, we will simplify it as much as possible, until we are left with some simple figures, circles, squares, cubes, cylinders or lines.

With a little practice, this skill will be automatic and very useful when making quick sketches.

Here I show you some examples that I did.

SKETCHES

Taking into account what was said before, we will begin to draw.

An animal with a large, furry tail, short legs, flashy eyes, and a friendly expression will score points for being adorable.

when making the traditional sketch, you should not be afraid of staining the page, you have to make dirty sketches, full of lines until you are satisfied

Constantly rotating the canvas will help us check the proportions and revise the drawing.

Using several layers will allow us to lower the opacity of the drawing and continue drawing on it in a cleaner way.

COLOR PLANO

Once I am satisfied with the sketch, with the Maru brush, or with the solid brush that you prefer, we will begin to give the color base to the drawing, we will put the solid colors, without shadows or lights.

Colors are an important element since they express many things, if a color is colder, it tends to represent sadness, so it will make our creature (not always) sadder and will make us want to hug it, take care of it and caress it. If the drawing tends to a warmer color, it will make us understand that it is a more playful animal, and we will want to accompany it. both are cute and lovable, but in their own way.

I put the color layers below the main sketch, since this will always allow me to see it, and if at any time I need to be guided by it, it's a matter of activating it and seeing what I need.

I separated the colors and some extremities in layers, for more comfort when giving it the shading.

TEXTURE AND COAT

Once the base is finished, we will start with the details, helping us with a brush that allows us to mix the color (I use this, https://assets.clip-studio.com/es-es/detail?id=1883096).

In this case I like to use the tool that allows us to anchor a layer to the lower one, anything that is drawn on this layer will be drawn only on the layer to which it is anchored.

Before starting you have to determine the light source, in my case it is natural, so it mostly comes from above.

We will begin to give brushstrokes trying to play with the shadows, textures and the volume of the animal.

Go testing the colors little by little, lighter and darker until we have a good result, a soft coat or shiny skin.

With the same brush, changing the thickness, we can go into more detail and add darker areas, under the legs, mouth, osico, eyes, etc.

With white I gave details where the light hit directly, such as the nose, eyes, or even the fur

SHADOW AND OVERALL LIGHT

I like how it looks to give a shadow and a light in general to the drawing, to all the layers.

For this we put all the layers inside a mask and on this we anchor a layer where the shadows will be painted.

These types of shadows do not necessarily have to be gray, we can play with the color, and use a dark purple, dark blue, etc.

Do not worry if the colors to be shaded are not the same tone, since we will use the "multiply" layer option, which is very useful in situations like this, and gives a very nice finish to the shadow

For the light I will use a lighter color and a bit strong, like yellow, blue or orange in this case.

We will paint where the light hits directly. In the case of lights, I prefer the "Focal Light" effect with a very low opacity, but this will be a matter of testing until you are convinced that the effect is correct for your drawing.

MONEY

To finish the drawing I added a simple background.

I was looking to give closure to the drawing since the totally white background did not convince me, I decided to put a platform of grass with a circle as the sky.

 

For the grass use this brush: https://assets.clip-studio.com/es-es/detail?id=1855609

FINAL RESULT

CONCLUSION

An adorable animal is an expressive creature with a great personality; there are several ways to make an animal to a more tender, short legs, wide tail, big eyes. But if the drawing manages to express the feelings of the animal, the rest does not matter.