Introduction

Oil painting is a well known and loved art medium, and thanks to the wide variety of brushes and assets available in Csp, digital oil painting can be achieved.

There are several styles in oil painting :

Some like to see the heavy oil texture whether by using the brush or the palette knife, while others like to lay the colors flat on the canvas in a way that shows the canvas texture more.

I will be showing how to paint the latter (Oil painting on canvas).

 

 

The Brushes

This is a list of all the brushes you need for “Digital Oil Painting” on Clip Studio Paint.

-Csp default Oil painting Brush : Thick Oil paint (Can be found in Csp tools bar : Brush : Thick Paint)

-Csp default Oil painting Brush : Oil paint (Can be found in Csp tools bar : Brush : Thick Paint)

-2 Oils Brush : (Can be downloaded from Csp assets library through the link below.)

- Real oil : (Can be downloaded from Csp assets library through the link below.)

-Sketchy PaintBlend Tool : (Can be downloaded from Csp assets library through the link below.)

You should take into account that the same brush can behave differently depending on :

-The pressure you apply on the pen

-The size of the brush

-The density of its texture

-The manner in which you handle the brush : one big continuous stroke or many smaller strokes

These things make all the difference in creating a digital oil painting because our goal is not to simply fill the canvas but to create the oil painting texture while doing so.

Links to Brushes :

How to download :

Click on the links I provided above and it will lead you to the download page of the asset.

Click on download and it will open Csp to start downloading.

Once it’s finished downloading, open Csp, and go to materials.

You can find the last thing you downloaded at the very top or you can look it up by typing the name on the search bar.

Click on the brush and hold, drag it onto the tools bar and drop it.

Now you can use it.

Canvas texture

One of the most important things in digital oil painting is the surface’s texture, and since we’re trying to imitate oil painting, we need to imitate the texture of the canvas as well.

There is a wide variety of Canvas texture in Csp library and you are free to choose any texture that serves as an oil painting base.

I used the “Canvas texture” (Can be downloaded from the following link) for my painting and it is sufficient enough.

How to download :

Just like instructed with the brushes, click on the link i’ve provided and it will lead you to the download page of the asset.

Click on download and once it’s finished and the canvas texture is in your material library

click on it, drag it onto the canvas and drop it.

Then go over to ‘layers’, select that same layer (Canvas Texture), lower the opacity to around 36% and set the layer mode to ‘Multiply’.

And you can see the texture visible through the color.

I made my background a blueish purple so that I can place the colors of my orange accurately (not too bright or too dark), because colors generally appear darker when compared to white.

But using a white canvas is fine as well and it will still show the texture.

The Sketch

First step into the painting : the sketch.

I used the color ‘bright red’ because i will be painting over the sketch and leaving some of it to mix with the other colors, so a bright red or orange against the blue background is best.

The sketch layer and all other layers should be placed beneath the canvas texture layer and above the background layer.

 

 

I used the Csp default ‘chalk’ Brush for the sketch.

You can find it in Csp tools bar : Brush : Pastel section : Chalk

Oil painting

Now let’s start Oil painting.

I Created a new layer under the sketch layer and painted the base color using Csp default ‘Thick oil Paint’ brush found in :

Csp tools bar : Brush : Thick paint section : Thick oil Paint.

I made several small strokes while painting just like in real life oil painting and not a singular big stroke because this selected brush behaves differently in the two scenarios.

And this way I had (ever so slightly) different hues of the same color just like real oil paint.

You are free to make a separate layer for each element (leaf, orange,..) but I would recommend you paint it all in one layer to make it easier to blend and mix the colors with these selected brushes.

And don’t worry about going over the line art (sketch) because we will be adding more layers of paint over it.

Now that I had my base color, I drew some loose lines to help me place my lights and shadows depending on the direction of the light.

I then started painting my shadows in the same manner as the base color, using the same brush.

I made several small strokes to allow the brush to blend and mix color and express the texture.

I added more shades in the shadow using the same brush (Csp thick oil paint).

And then, for the lighter shades, I used a different brush : Csp default ‘Oil paint’ Brush that can be found in :

Csp tools bar : Brush : Thick paint section : Oil Paint.

This brush ‘Oil paint’ has more texture in it and it behaves differently based on how much pressure you put on the pencil or how high/low the texture density is or even how big/small the size is.

Since I didn’t want to completely cover the initial orange, I used light pressure on my pen while painting the light area (yellow color)

And only applied more pressure on the highlight area (where the light hits directly).

If used correctly, this brush has three qualities :

1-Create different hues of the same color just by changing the pressure applied on the pen.

2-Blend the colors in an oily manner and create different hues in between : I paint with one color using low pressure, then I use a different color again using low pressure and keep color picking between the two and it blends the colors while keeping the brush texture.

3-Changing the density of the texture of the brush at will to help with the blending and give out the oil painting look.

I used these three qualities to my advantage while painting the background.

 

 

As you can see I used 4 colors in the same range :

Dark blue for the cast shadow of the orange.

Light blue and Turquoise for the background : Mixing these two colors using the (oil paint)Brush created different hues in my background while keeping the texture.

And then I increased the size and texture density of the brush and added a hint of light purple.

I played around with the texture density of the brush and changed the size back and forth between small and big to well blend my colors.

Now that I had my base, I used a thicker brush to apply some paint.

I used the brush ‘2 oil brushes’ brush which I mentioned in ‘the brushes’ section. (you can download it from Csp assets library in the link provided above.)

Just like I explained earlier, in oil painting, don’t use one continuous stroke to fill the canvas but rather smaller strokes to allow the brushes to mix and blend the colors and keep the oily appearance.

Oil painting is most apparent in the different hues in one spot.

So the small brush strokes I made weren’t all in the same spot but rather I dispersed them to have a variety of hues in one spot.

Using the same method, I added some colors to the leaf as well.

please keep in mind that I am painting on the same layer to allow color mixing.

Now that we have some thick oil spots, we need to mix them.

Since this brush (2 oils) doesn’t have that quality, I used another one :

The (real oil) brush (mentioned in the brushes section, and can be downloaded from the link provided above).

 

This (real oil) brush has thick paint but also allows beautiful oil blending between colors.

 

 

Another quality is that it uses both colors chosen on the color picker :The main color being the thick paint and the second color creates some strands and lines in a way that mimics a real brush.

Aside from he blue on the leaf, I didn’t add any color.

I used the (real oil) brush and picked the already existing colors using the eye dropper (found in the tools bar).

As I explained before, when applying different colors, the brush will naturally blend them. and it will create a harmonious gradient of the colors as long as you control the pressure you put on the pen.

Once I saw that my colors were nicely blended, I added some hues to the shadow of the orange and the cast shadow with the same brush.

Here, I went back to Csp (Oil paint brush) that I used earlier.

I added some colors to the background (Yellow and Pink) to break the monotonous blue, using the same method explained earlier : Increase texture density and Increase brush size while applying low pressure on the pen.

Again, using the same (oil paint) brush, I added some color notes.

This is a personal choice and you don’t have to do it but I find that it added some flavor to the painting.

Color notes are colors of the same value as the colors in the area you want to add it to so that you don’t break the overall value of the painting.

Using the same method (Increase texture density, Increase brush size, low pressure on pen) I blended my colors together.

I lowered the texture density, decreased brush size and put high pressure on the pen to add the finer details.

At this point, I merged all of my layers, including the canvas texture and background.

Go over to layers, select a visible layer, click on the right side of the mouse and select ‘merge visible layers’ to do so.

After that, I added a new layer above my painting.

I lowered the opacity to 23 and set the layer mode to ‘add glow’.

Using the same brush (Low pressure, big size) and with the color orange, I painted over some parts of my orange (Light area) to add some glow.

I didn’t paint over all of my initial sketch, as you can see some lines seeping through.

This adds to the painterly look as it serves as an under painting so you don’t have to mind it as long as it’s not a dark (black-grey..) color that disrupts the painting.

After that, I used the (oil paint) brush and made some fine linear strokes in white to give off the illusion that a real palette knife was used in this painting as it tends to have this look when painting or you scrape off some paint.

Now, for the final stage :

I used (Sketch PaintBlend Tool) Brush (Can be download from Csp library through the link provided above).

This tool is a blender that allows to swipe or scrape some paint without making it look blurred.

I blended some spots of the orange, the background and its edges between the shadow and cast shadow

Don't press hard on the blending brush and don't make a full swipe.

Instead, tap with the blending brush where you want to blend and softly swipe on the edges.

Be careful not to over blend because that would erase the oil texture we've built so far.

Only use it on some spots.

Finally, I added a little added the highlights on the orange as well as on the leaf and blended it using the same brush.

Final Painting

And this is the final painting : Orange - Digital Oil Painting on Canvas.

Digital oil painting will keep evolving as long as the brushes and their settings evolve.

Thank you for reading this far.

My name is Cherry and I am a landscape and scenery artist.

You can check out my work on :

Instagram @cherrzart