Hi 😀! I'm LibertyFreedom, a concept artist and manga artist who has been using Clip Studio Paint as my primary digital art tool for the past 7 years.

 

 

What is a collage?

A collage is an artwork created by combining different materials, such as drawings, photographs, brushes, and more, into a single cohesive composition.

In this article, I’ll show you 5 easy and creative ways to make stunning digital collages. You can start using these tips right away to express your unique art style and vision. Let’s dive in!

Brainstorm your design before starting.

Figure Out a Theme or Concept

Before creating your collage, it's important to establish a theme or concept. This helps narrow down your image and asset selection, making it easier to create a cohesive and visually appealing design.

Your theme or concept can be based on a specific subject, a color scheme, a personal interest, or even a storytelling element. This focused approach ensures your collage has a clear direction and purpose.

 

 

(Optional) Use a color scheme for your collage.

Choose a color scheme that matches the collage’s theme or mood to create an aesthetically pleasing look. Limiting yourself to a specific color palette can help unify different elements into a cohesive composition.

Gather Your Assets

Once you have figure out a theme and potentially a color scheme, gather all the necessary assets from Clip Studio Assets. These can include image materials (such as objects or background images), decoration brushes, and 3D objects.

1.Cluster collage

A cluster-style collage involves placing a larger image or images at the center as the focal point, with smaller images surrounding and overlapping them. Some images are placed in front, while others are behind, creating a layered effect.

In my case for this character, whom I have cropped out and intend to create a collage for, my concept revolves around conveying energetic emotions, with the theme being a young boy surrounded by sunflowers.

The images and assets I plan to search and download will mainly relate to sunflowers, and the color choices should be saturated enough to convey energetic emotion. Additionally, I want this collage to follow an analogous color scheme for a harmonious look.

 

 

Start with a solid color, a gradient, or an material image that sets the base background for the collage.

 

 

Place your main subject in the center, which is the character in this case. Then, drag the downloaded materials from Clip Studio Asset onto the canvas.

 

Use the transform tool to experiment with the images, adjusting their sizes and rotations. Vary the sizes by making some images large, some medium, and some small.

 

Overlap the images by placing some in front and some behind the main subject to create a sense of depth.

 

 

To separate the images from each other like cutouts, you can create a white border for each image. Click [Border effect] from the layer property and adjust the thickness of the white border. Notice that the border is always the same distance all around if you use [border effect]

 

 

To achieve shape variety for the border, you'll need to do it manually.

Create a new layer underneath the material image.

Use the lasso or polyline sub tool to create different shapes for area selection.

Fill in with white color.

 

In this case, I applied the [Border effect] to the character and the front flowers, while manually creating different border shapes for the remaining sun flowers.

To enhance the separation between the cutouts, you can add a shadow layer beneath each one.

Hold Ctrl to select either the image layer or the white border layer, then fill the selected area with a darker tone.

Hold Ctrl and drag the shadow layer aside to position it, adding a sense of shadow to the cutout.

For the background, you can simply use a material image from Clip Studio Asset.

Alternatively, if you prefer a repetitive pattern background,

Create a new layer at the bottom of the collage.

Access the [Tone] effect from the Layer Property panel.

Select from a variety of dot patterns available; choose one that suits your theme. In my case, I chose 'Flower (mid)' to fit my theme.

The size of the dot pattern is determined by the darkness of the color you choose to fill in. In my case, I didn't want the dots to be too big, so I used a lighter color to fill in, which decreased the dot pattern size.

To give a color to the monochrome tone effect,

Create a new layer and clip it below the tone effect layer, then fill it with a color of your choice.

If you're experimenting with background colors, instead of manually selecting and filling a color from the color wheel, press Ctrl+H or go to [Edit] > [Tonal Correction] to access the [Hue/Saturation/Luminosity] panel. Here, you can conveniently move the sliders to discover a color you like.

To add more pattern variation to the background, I add a new layer on top and use a decorative flower brush that I downloaded from Clip Studio Asset to draw some random flower patterns.

While searching for material patterns, I found a very useful basic pattern for background. I downloaded it and applied it to see the effect. The background looks much richer now, and I am satisfied with the result.

Clip Studio Assets offers a wide variety of materials— feel free to try different ones to see how they enhance your work.

 

 

To enhance your collage, consider adding meaningful words, also known as typography.

Bring out the [Sub Tool Detail] panel to add more variation to the text such as changing the font style to suit the collage theme and adding a white border to stand out against the background.

To add color variation to the text, create a new layer on top and clip it to the text layer. Then use the [Gradient] tool to create color gradient.

 

 

Final touch: Tonal adjustment

Once you've finished arranging your collage, you may want to make tonal adjustments to enhance specific elements or the overall look.

Go to the [Layer] menu and Select [New Correction Layer].

Choose a tonal adjustment option from the available menu.

 

Another option is to add a new layer on top and clip it to the material image. Then, change the layer blending mode and fill it with a color to adjust the tone.

 

 

In my case , I use [New correction layer] to make the leaves to be more reddish because I want my collage to be closer to analogous color scheme. However, I don’t want the flowers to be affected.

To isolate the parts I don't want to be affected, I enable layer [Mask] and erase the petals and disk florets .

As a final touch, you might want to experiment with different tonal adjustment correction layers on top of the collage to see if they improve the overall look.

In my case, I added a [Brightness/Contrast] correction layer on top of the collage to slightly enhance the overall contrast. After reviewing the result, I'm satisfied with how it turned out.

I highly recommend trying out the [Hue/Saturation/Luminosity] correction layer because it allows you to easily change the color mood and you might end up preferring it over the original. It's a fun way to experiment and see what works best for your collage!

Here's another example of a Cluster collage featuring multiple characters.

To create this collage, I carefully cut out each character from different drawings and arranged them together on a new canvas. I overlapped them, with some positioned behind others, and slightly decreased the size of some cutouts to give the composition a sense of depth.

 

 

Then I added the material images I downloaded from Clip Studio Asset.

I applied borders to each image and created a shadow layer underneath to make them appear as cutouts.

For the background, I added a Pattern Material image downloaded from Clip Studio Assets. The material is originally in monochrome, to add color to the pattern, I use [Layer Color] effect from the Layer Property.

Texture layer on top of collage

As a final touch, apart from adding tonal adjustment correction layer, you can also add a final layer of cohesion by dropping a texture on top of the finished collage.

In this case I want to make the collage to have a vintage and nostalgic feel, so I add a vintage paper texture downloaded from Clip Studio Assets.

After adding, I set the layer mode to Brightness and lower the opacity to a suitable degree.

2. Scene Collage

For Scene Collage, start by adding a scene background image.

In this example My theme is Relaxing at the beach, so i bring in a beach background downloaded from Clip Studio Asset.

Before adding any material images, it's helpful to consider a popular composition technique called the 'Rule of Thirds'.

This technique divides your canvas into a grid of nine equal parts, with important elements placed along the lines or at their intersections for a balanced composition.

To easily create the 'rule of thirds' grid, you can download this auto action from Clip Studio Assets.

Place the most important material image first, which is the focal point, according to the rule of thirds grid. This means positioning it along one of the grid lines or at an intersection for a visually pleasing composition.

 

 

Once you've positioned the images for the focal point, proceed to add the remaining material images.

Aim to fill each box of the grid with a material so that the composition looks balanced and visually appealing. This ensures that every part of your collage contributes to its overall harmony and completeness.

Close the grid. Apply borders to each one and create a shadow layer underneath to make each material as a cutout.

Tonal adjustment

In my case, I want to slightly darken the tone of the Japanese house and palm tree in the background. So to make tonal adjustment for the image, you can either add a [New correction layer] or add a new layer with a different blending mode.

In this case, I add a new layer on top of the image and clip it to the image below.

Then I change the layer mode to 'Multiply' to darken the overall tone of the image with light bluish color.

You can experiment with different blending modes to see which one fits best.

This technique allows you to selectively adjust the tonal values of specific parts of your collage.

 

 

Lastly, to enhance the overall collage, I add a sun shine effect on top of the finished collage. Since I was satisfied with the result, I didn't add a tonal adjustment correction layer on top of the collage. This additional touch adds a bright and cheerful atmosphere to the collage, bringing the scene to life.

 

 

3.Mimic Collage

You can arrange your collage to mimic the design of something else such as a calendar, windows user interface, playing card, and more.

For instance, in this example, I've mimicked a card design with a complementary color scheme.

First start by using the [Rectangle] selection sub tool to create a green background. Then, add a layer of [tone] effect with a dot pattern from the layer property and clip it to the background layer. In this case, I use ‘spades’ pattern.

 

 

After that, use the [Polyline] selection sub tool to create a triangle selection area and fill it with a color, follow by clipping a pattern material layer .

 

 

Bring in the material image and mimic the layout commonly seen on playing cards. In this case, I add a character, a letter and a star material ,all with border effect.

Group this collage in a folder.

Duplicate the collage folder and flip it both vertically and horizontally.

To enhance the visual interest of the duplicated collage, I changed its color to red(except for the character) . Additionally, I adjusted the rotation of the duplicated star to match the orientation of the original.

Lastly, I also duplicate the blue spades effect tone layer and flip it horizontally. Then I change the color to red and use the layer mask to remove the unwanted part.

 

 

4.Multiple Shapes Collage

You can organize your collage within various shapes, such as squares, triangles, circles, polygons, or even irregular organic shapes. These shapes serve as frameworks for arranging your images and materials, allowing you to create visually appealing compositions with unique layouts.

Start by adding a material background to your canvas

 

 

To create geometric shapes like rectangles, ellipses, and polygons, utilize the Rectangle, Ellipse, and Polygon Selection sub tools. To create organic shape, use the Lasso tool instead.

After the shape is created, fill the selection area with a color of your choice on a new layer. Each layer for each shape.

 

 

To add a white border within each shape, start by creating a new layer on top of each shape. Then, press Ctrl to select the layer and navigate to the [Select] menu and choose [Shrink the selected layer]. Once the selection area is reduced, fill the layer with white color to create the border.

Repeat the process to create a smaller shape within the white border. Fill this smaller shape with a different color to provide a space for placing the material image inside.

Also, create a shadow layer underneath each cutout. Then Import the images and clip them to each of these shapes.

 

 

Next, use this tape brush from Clip Studio Assets to add tape to the shape cutouts, giving a realistic effect as if the cutouts are stuck on a wooden board.

 

 

Finally, add a frame layer on top of the collage.

My concept for this collage is that the character loves to eat dessert, as he is surrounded by a variety of desserts with different shapes.

You can also use this method to introduce your characters in a collage by placing them into different shapes and adding a name label for each one.

 

 

To add more personality to the character, I include a background image for each of them and I border each character to separate them from the background image. This not only adds visual interest but also helps to highlight each character individually.

5. One Shape Collage

Creating a collage within a specific shape or silhouette can add a unique and expressive element to your artwork. The shape or silhouette can be anything meaningful to your collage, such as an apple, butterfly, house, etc.

 

 

Begin by creating a simple background that won't draw attention away from the collage later on.

In my case I fill in a solid color and add a light frame for the background.

Then import or draw a shape that you want your collage to take.

In my case, I import a heart shape from Clip Studio Material and position it centrally on the background

Import all the material images or cutouts.

Use the transform tool to rotate, resize, and overlap the cutouts as needed to fulfil the shape. It is okay if the material images slightly exceed the boundaries of the shape.

Once you’re happy with the arrangement, hide the heart shape layer to reveal your cutouts forming a heart-shaped collage

The background feels a bit empty, so to enhance the background, I import this frame material downloaded from Clip Studio Assets.

 

 

I also use some decorative brush to add some shiny effects and add some text to give the background more variation. However, I don’t want the decorations to be too attention-grabbing, so I filled them in with the same color as the border itself to blend in with the frame.

Another way to arrange the collage but in a neat and organized manner is to use frames.

After you have created the background and the shape, you can use [Rectangle frame] sub tool to create a frame that covers the entire shape. (Heart shape in this case)

 

 

Then divide the frame into smaller frames.

Select the Frame folder layer and go to the [Layer] menu > [Ruler/Frame] > [Divide frame border equally]

 

 

Specify a number of divisions and select [Create empty folder].

Once you click ok, each frame with its own folder will be created automatically.

Now you can import the images into their corresponding frame folder.

Clip the overall frame folder to the shape below so that the material images wont exceed the shape boundaries.

If there are unfilled gaps between the frames, simply create a new layer and use the bucket tool to fill in the gaps with white.

 

 

Lastly, add a border material, decoration brush and a text with the same color as the border to give the background some variation.

The concept of this collage example is to show how much I love to eat dessert in a creative way.

 

 

Thank you for reading! I hope you found this tutorial helpful! See you in the next Tips.