How to turn photos into paintings with Clip Studio Paint
I am Comic black rainbow
If you are someone who doesn’t like to draw backgrounds from scratch
I believe you should have had the same thoughts as me
Just use the photo as a background XDDD
It's a pity that after trying to create like this
My experience allowed me to see the mismatch between the realistic background and the things I drew.
So I seldom create like this
But this time I came to Xiamen during the Chinese New Year
Saw some beautiful but complicated lantern street scenes
It makes me want to try it again and see how effective it is with photos!
Spend a day or two during the New Year holidays
Concentrate on solving problems and obstacles encountered in the painting process
The result this time was unexpectedly successful! ha!
So of course, I must hurry up and share it with you
How I use Clip Studio Paint to simply process the background
And use the background of this photo to create a Year of the Dragon greeting picture!
First of all, I went to the New Year lantern street scene to shoot. When I saw the street scene, I actually had a picture in my mind. Of course, the picture in our mind is actually very blurry, which is why we need to go through The reason why hand painting is used to visualize the pictures in our minds is actually that painting is to visualize our imagination and emotions 😃 😃! So I took a few photos with very close angles and a few photos with angles that appeared in my mind as materials for subsequent drawings. They were all taken with an iPhone 12, without any special adjustments. After all, I will be doing painting creations in the future. It is adjusted according to the picture, so there is no need to adjust the light at this stage. Personally, I think that unless you plan to publish your own photography and then adjust the light, otherwise the photos will be adjusted beautifully at this stage, and you may not use it when drawing. superior.
After having some photos as creative materials, now we can use these materials to stir-fry!
1. Draw creative composition
When we have photos, we can actually draw the pictures in our minds directly in the photos. At this stage, you can boldly release your imagination and draw all the pictures in your mind, or even draw several It doesn’t matter the version! Because when creating, sometimes a lot of inspiration comes from my mind. If I don’t draw it down quickly, it’s easy to miss some good ideas, so at this time I drew two versions of the draft.
The draft on the right is actually my record of the draft on the left, mainly because I usually draw characters and don’t have much experience in drawing dragons. I was not completely sure about the angle of the dragon in the draft on the left at that time, so I drew a dragon that I thought I would like to see the effect from an angle that is easy to draw and good-looking. As a result, the picture I drew showed a girl and a dragon looking at each other, but no one around them saw the appearance of the dragon. It felt like meeting an elf and smoothing it over. Feeling lonely, but it’s the New Year! ! ! So in the end I chose to challenge the draft on the left, which was more able to present the festive and lively atmosphere of the New Year that I wanted to present!
2. Illustration of photos
Entering the photo illustration stage, I used Clip Studio Paint this time for simple photo processing. First, I used the "illustration style" filter effect. The reason why photos cannot be directly applied to paintings is mainly because photos are too realistic. As for painting creations, the reason why paintings are charming is because paintings remove the essentials from the picture, leaving out many details and leaving the essence. Add the creator's expression and painting habits, so here we are not trying to make the photo more complex, but we should make the photo simpler! So here I used an illustration style filter to make the photo simpler! So when I use the illustration style filter, I cancel all the lines and make the picture look like color blocks. However, I found that in the color level of Clip Studio Paint, even if it is pulled to the lowest level, the picture still looks like It’s relatively complicated😅, so if I want to have a more painterly feel, I need to use painting to make local adjustments.
After several adjustments, I found that the illustration-style filter of Clip Studio Paint would cause the brightness of the image to fluctuate due to the adjustment of color levels, so in the end I had to choose a brighter brightness to give the image a relatively color-blocked feel. The order has been adjusted. Of course, after the adjustment, I also adjusted some brightness and overall color to make the color of the picture redder and warmer!
3. Draw line drawings
Next, it’s time to draw the line drawing! In fact, if you like thick coating and have advanced painting skills, basically this part can be omitted😆. On the one hand, thick coating does not necessarily require drawing a line draft in advance. People with strong drawing skills can actually draw it directly. , Secondly, as long as the drawn picture does not look inconsistent with the picture, the color matching can be integrated with the photo. In fact, there is no difference at all whether the line drawing is drawn or not. But because on the one hand, I plan to use a less complicated cel style drawing before the complex background, and on the other hand, I have no experience in drawing dragons, so to be on the safe side, I still draw line drawings~
4. Coloring
After we have completed the line drawing, the next part that really requires some brainpower and painting skills is the color, light and shadow parts! In terms of the color of this picture, because the saturation of the photo itself is already very high, it is best not to increase the saturation in the color, otherwise the whole picture will make people visually tired, so here, the colors I use are all I tried my best to make it not too different from the color of the background, and even lowered some of the saturation to color it. In order to create a happy New Year atmosphere for the dragon and the girl in the front, I still used red as the main color, and for the people in the background Partly, I believe that many people are troubled by their hair color and clothing color. A little trick I use here is: after painting the colors of the two or three people in the front, if you feel that the overall color is quite peaceful, the color of the people in the back will be the same as before. Just match the colors of these two or three people! This way, no matter how big the crowd is later, it won't feel too messy after painting.
As for light and shadow, the entire row of lanterns on the left is the part with the strongest light, so in terms of light and shadow, I personally boldly paint the shadows! I know that what many people are most afraid of when drawing shadows is to draw shadows on the faces of important things, but in fact this is wrong. The more afraid you are, the less able you are to draw good-looking light and shadow objectively, so sometimes be brave enough to break through yourself. Instead of feeling uncomfortable, you will make some surprising new discoveries!
5. Light and shadow decoration
After we had almost finished the painting as a whole, I actually always felt that something was missing, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I thought it might be because of insufficient details, but my past experience told me that it was definitely not a matter of details.
😆 , so I didn’t even waste time on trying to add details of characters or dragons. I directly added halos and light spots according to the overall picture, and the whole picture took on a completely new look! So I didn't hesitate to add some red crumbs like after the firecrackers were set off, add text, and you're done!
After this attempt to create with photos was successful,
Suddenly the idea of creating through photos no longer felt so impossible.
Fortunately, Clip Studio Paint’s filter effects don’t make the picture too blocky or simple.
Otherwise I might draw in a more complicated way
That might be another painting issue to overcome.
In short, I am very happy to share with you the whole process of using Clip Studio Paint to turn photos into paintings. I hope that the above sharing can help you to try different methods and techniques when creating ~ If you still have If you have any other questions, please feel free to leave a reply below, send a private message on social media, or ask me via email! I look forward to having the opportunity in the future to see you draw beautiful paintings from life photos!
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