Introduction

Hi! In this tutorial I’ll be explaining how to make a flat illustration for the cover of your comic or novel. A cover according to me should be personal and should reflect what your story is about.

 

I’ll be dividing the process into 5 steps: Theme, Mood, Composition, Drawing and Final Touches.

 

Please refer to the video for a more in detail tutorial :)

 

Theme

First, decide what you want the illustration to be about, Select what you want to draw based on the genre and theme of your story. The rest of the process will depend on this.

 

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you decide what you want:

• what’s the genre of my story?

• what is the main theme of my story?

• what do i want to show or convey?

 

Mood

You can show the mood of an illustration by selecting the right colors.

 

Warm colors can give a sense of compassion and comfort while cool colors feel distant and calm. Bright colors can show fun and playfulness while muted colors can feel more subtle and peaceful.

 

Similarly, different tints also convey different emotions. Blue can feel sad, Yellow feels happy, Green can be relaxing and Pink can be feel innocent.

 

Three common color schemes are:

 

Complementary : These are opposite colors. They give contrast to the illustration and look very vibrant. I like to use complimentary colors to show opposites or to make an element stand out. Complementary colors can show a story.

For example, here I used blue and yellow to show contrast between the characters.

 

Triadic : These are colors that are evenly spaced out on the color wheel. Triadic color schemes give you more colors to choose from and are still vibrant. Usually one of the colors is used as the main color and the other two are used as accents.

 

Analogous: These are colors that are next to each other. They give a sense of harmony and are easy on the eyes. Analogous colors are often seen in nature.

Composition

Composition is how you’ll put together all the elements and colors in your illustration. You can select elements according to the story. These can be direct or indirect. For example, you can have two characters holding plants, this directly shows that the story involves plants, Also, one of the character can hold a cactus and the other can hold a sunflower to metaphorically show their personalities.

 

Add elements that feel important to the story. Unlike rendered art, In flat illustrations often, the idea is more in focus.

 

Drawing

First you can select an artstyle of choice. Rounded artstyles can feel more approachable and geometric can feel more distant. The illustration can show an event or be abstract according to your own personal choice. Draw what you feel tells a story. This can include an important scene in the story or just characters.

 

Approaching The Drawing Process (tips and tricks) :

 

 

The process i follow is, first I draw my sketch, then I make my lineart. After that I lay down the bigger shapes and pick colors and finally i start refining it all and finalizing the colors.

 

Lineart:

 

Clip Studio Paint makes the lineart process very easy. In my cover illustration, i added a fisheye filter to make the illustration feel more dynamic.

You can also use grid lines (View > Grid) and liquify tool to adjust your lines. Further if you want, you can also make your lines thinner or thicker by going to “Filter” > “Correction(L)” > “Adjust Line Width”

Using Masks

 

Say you want your drawing to be in a circular frame, you could simply erase the outside of the selection but a more efficient way to do it is to make a selection and click on the mask, the mask will directly hide anything outside the selection, or you could add a mask and simply erase the area you dont want visible. Now if i want a part visible again, i can “un-hide” it by going over that area using any brush.

 

To see the masked area, go to Layer> Layer Mask > Show Mask. This will highlight the masked area.

 

Moving on, if you want to copy a mask you can duplicate it onto a new layer by dragging it onto the layer while pressing alt. To invert the masked area, press “ctrl + i " or “command + i ".

 

I used a mask for the hair and mirror. I also used it for making sure that the things coming out of the character’s head don’t go over his hair and for adding things behind the characters.

Coloring

 

When shading skin, use a darker warmer tone for the blush and a cooler darker tone for the shadows. This works for all skin colors without looking muddy.

 

Also, try to balance the colors, For example, here since the girl’s black hair would have stood out too much, i made the guitar’s color black as well. Similarly, all colors are spread across the illustration to make it look more balanced.

 

Final Touches

For final touches i wanna go over color editing in CSP and using textures. In flat illustrations or well, in any illustration, these can really make your art pop and make it feel more “put together”.

 

Brightness increases the overall lightness of the image while contrast adjusts the difference between the darkest and lightest colors.

 

Onto hue saturation and luminosity, hue changes the pigment. You can change the hue by adding a new layer and setting the blend mode to hue as well.

 

Saturation is how colorful it is and luminosity adjusts the amount of “light”.

 

Posterization decreases the number of tones. Usually I use it to make a palette out of the illustration so, i can use a color palette generator to find more colors that suit the illustration.

 

Reverse gradient inverts the colors.

 

Tone Curve adjusts the contrast of the illustration, it can also be used to manipulate the colors in the illustration.

 

I tend to use masks to airbrush some of these to add tints and highlights here and there in the illustration.

 

Color Balance is used to adjust the colors of an image by adjusting the balance of each RGB and CMY color. It keeps the brightness consistent.

 

Overlays and Textures!

Even in flat illustrations you can add subtle gradients to make it look more interesting. Gradients are a great idea for this. You can add gradients on multiply or overlay layers to tie the colors together. You can also play around with other blend modes to see what suits your drawing. Personally, i love adding red and blue gradients as they make the illustration look nicer.

 

Textures are a great way to make a flat illustration look better.

 

In textures, the simplest and my favorite one is adding perlin noise. You can select this through filter render, perlin noise It adds a really nice realistic texture to the illustration. Clip studio paint also offers textures in its assets that you can use. They also have patterns that dont end for adding texture. Adjust these to your liking.

 

Bonus

If you want you to reallyyyy make the illustration while taking away a bit of the “flat color” aspect of the drawing, here are three ways to do that:

 

Color dodge is a great way to put things in focus, you can airbrush the parts you want attention on and then set the layer to color dodge.

 

Other ways to draw attention in a rendered or flat illustration is through vignette. You can make your own vignette by airbrushing the corners with a dark blue or brown on a multiply layer. This will unconsciously direct the viewer’s attention towards the center of the illustration.

 

You can also have a similar effect by copying the layer and going to filter, blur, Gaussian blur. Then just use an airbrush to erase the part you want in focus.

 

Thank You!

I hope this tutorial helped you!

The main thing that I want you to remember is, use colors boldly and don't think too much, Have fun making whatever you make. You don't have to rush through the process.

 

And once again, thank you for your time. :)