🌑 | Creating an oil portrait with Clip studio Paint

Hello everyone, I'm Marialex also known as Alexxa16, today I have a tutorial that I hope you enjoy, we will make a portrait simulating a work in oil.

🌒 | About the oil

Oil painting is a painting technique highlighted for its versatility. It is oil-based which allows you to paint on different materials, wood, canvas, glass...

 

Oil paint remains wet for longer, which makes it easier to mix colors and allows corrections. It is very popular due to the vibrant colors it allows.

 

When you mix the oil with linseed oil it becomes more transparent which allows the lower layers to still be visible when painting

 

Oil painting, unlike other techniques such as watercolor, allows correction since it is possible to use solvents to dilute the paint and clean.

During my university years, I had the opportunity to do some works in oil, on wood and on canvas, although my technique at that time is not the best, we can see that they are bright colors and a very characteristic texture, it is possible to polish our works to so that the brushstrokes are not noticeable, giving it a smoother and more integrated appearance, but in my case I think that seeing the brushstrokes adds a touch of realism to our work.

🌓 | Aplicando a Clip Studio Paint 2.0

Here I will only do a small analysis of what we can do to simulate an oil illustration before putting it into practice.

Brushes

In the case of oil painting, I think that textured brushes have a better effect, we can play a little with the properties to obtain a rich and meaningful work. Let's also try to use the airbrush as little as possible, we can use it on the edge or to add blush, since it could hide the brush strokes, however we can use the textured brushes to mix.

Over the years I have built up a large collection of textured and shaped brushes, but the truth is that the brushes that we have by default can also serve the same purpose, we just have to play a little with the settings, for example the tempera brush.

 

We can add a texture, intensify or reduce the density of that texture

We can increase or reduce the amount of paint or its density (how thick it will be). Spreading color will cause it to mix colors

You can also activate the Change brush tip color option, this can help us have interesting color variations in our drawings

Linseed oil

In the case of linseed oil that helps us make the paint transparent, the solution is simple, we can use our Clip Studio tools with our brushes to reduce the density of the paint or its opacity.

Corrections

To make corrections in this case, almost never use the eraser, but rather more layers loaded with paint to cover or simply the back button, a lot of oil painting is about superimposition.

 

To take advantage of digital tools, I also used the liquidify tool a lot.

Layers

In oil painting what we do is superimpose paint, if we want to do the same in an illustration we can work in a single layer, or reduce our use of layers to a minimum, this step is not totally necessary, but it makes corrections a little easier, in In my case I made a single layer with the background, and I duplicated this single layer when I was going to make important changes, the effects, signatures and textures were on separate layers for ease.

🌔 | Let's make a portrait

In search of a perfect reference

If you are a beginner, keep the following recommendations in mind:

 

1. Clear distinction between light and shadow. We look for contrast.

2. Recognizable features.

3. The light source should be easily identifiable, having more than 2 light sources can be very confusing.

Steps to draw

In the initial video you can see the process, this is a timelapse and not a live video, the reason is because it took many hours and I think it would have been boring to watch, I usually zoom in a lot and have the view window activated so I can see the process. completed work.

I consider myself a very experimental artist, so my method changes depending on the drawing I make, for a while I initially started drawing in grayscale to add colors later, now I start directly in color without a sketch, I simply make masses of the main color and work From there.

 

If you are a beginner, making a good sketch can save you time, since generally if you start directly in color, you will have to make quite a few adjustments.

I started with the background and put the main colors on it with a textured brush, the biggest thing, although it doesn't look very good, it can be polished, it is important to trust the process. The reference was only a guide since the color palette is not the same.

The next thing is to start putting the features as spots, the location was very important, but it underwent several changes, at this moment the head was very straight, when it should be leaning a little on the hands, I adjust that in the next step with the liquify tool, at this point I was working on a single layer.

 

Eyebrows are very important.

The hands are a bit difficult for me, I revised a little using 3D models, to be sure that I had the right structure, I continued working on them, I also added some shadows, to give the sensation of three-dimensionality, Here I also began to refine the arm, taking great care the use of textured brushes

The hair was especially difficult, I basically added many layers until I was satisfied, I integrated warm and cold colors into the hair, the shadows and the face, to give it vividness.

 

The hair and edges of the drawing were gently blended into the background to give it an integrated look.

Here I started to create some layers for effects,

1. I imported a texture for the dress, transformed it using mesh transformation, then with a layer mask I removed it from where it was of no use, finally the combination mode was multiply, with an opacity of 40%

2. Add a layer to give a pink glow to the skin and thus integrate and give vividness.

3. A multiply layer to give depth to shadows

To generate an integrated work, I made brush strokes in the background that integrated into the dress, now everything seems more unified, I also feel that if it had ended on the white dress it would have looked a little cut off and less harmonious, although these are personal preferences.

 

 

If you wish, you can put a texture layer over the work, trying different combination modes, or use the Perlin noise filter to add more realism, personally I prefer it without it

🌕 | Final comments

Thank you very much for reading this tutorial, I hope it has been useful to you. If you like my work and want to see more of my content, I leave you a link to my social networks.

 

 

I hope to have facilitated this training in some way in your artistic journey.

 

For my part, it has been everything. Thank you!