Drawing Cozy Interiors

Do you want to learn how to draw warm and cozy interiors? Hi, my name is Oyun Orka, a VTuber who tries to draw, and while drawing interior scenes can seem challenging, it's actually relatively easy if you break it down into steps! So for today, let's talk about how to draw cozy interior scenes using perspective rulers in Clip Studio Paint.

Since interior scenes tend to have a lot of man-made objects, it's important to at least understand some perspective, so let's first start off with some perspective basics.

Perspective Basics

Generally, when drawing perspective, you can break it down into 3 parts: The Horizon line, the vanishing point, and vanishing lines.

As you can see here, since we have a singular vanishing point which all the vanishing lines branch out from, this is called one point perspective.

Aside from one point perspective, there's also two point perspective, three point perspective, and also four point perspective, but I'll focus on linear perspective for this tutorial, so 1-3 point perspective.

1 point perspective has a singular vanishing point on the horizon line, and all vanishing lines lead to the singular vanishing point.

Objects horizontally at a 90 degree angle from the horizon line are straight and are parallel to the horizon line, and vertical lines are straight but are perpendicular to the horizon line.

Meanwhile, for two point perspective, there will be 2 vanishing points along the horizon line, and the distance between these two points can vary.

All vanishing lines lead to either of the two points, depending which way they’re facing- Any surface facing the left will have lines converging at the left vanishing point, and vice versa.

And here, vertical lines remain straight and perpendicular to the horizon line.

And finally, we have 3 point perspective- For 3 point perspective, we typically have 2 vanishing points along the horizon line, and also a third vanishing point either above or below the horizon line.

Here, instead of remaining straight and perpendicular to the horizon line, the vertical lines now converge at the third vanishing point.

Perspective Grids

So while you could draw your perspective grid manually, if you're using Clip Studio Paint, there are easier ways to do it automatically!

The first way you could make your perspective grid is to go under layer, then go under ruler frame and click straight and click Create Perspective ruler.

This will open up a pop up where you can select what sort of perspective you want to create: One point perspective, two point perspective or three point perspective. And you can click whether you'd like to create it on a new layer or not.

This will create a new, default perspective ruler.

Alternatively, you can do it manually as well. By going under Create New Ruler > Perspective Ruler > Add vanishing point, you’ll be able to add a perspective grid. By default, this will be a one point perspective since you're just adding one point. But if you'd like to add multiple vanishing points, you can go ahead and add them as well.

After adding another vanishing point, you'll see that the horizon line is a little bit slanted. To fix that, you can go under Operation Object and click anywhere on the ruler lines. Next, on the horizon line, click the horizon line and just click Horizontalize eye level.

Also in this menu you'll be able to turn on and off the grid.

You can turn on the grid for the XY plane in red, the YZ plane in green and the XZ plane in blue. This will create a visual guide of where your lines will go when you're drawing on this perspective grid.

Alternatively, if you don't want the entire grid taking up space on your canvas, instead of showing the entire grid, you can also go into Perspective Ruler > Process > Add guide.

Whenever you draw a line from whichever point, it'll create a guide. To move around any of the points, just go under Operation Object and move this around, and if you want to delete guide, you can go to Delete guide and just click on the ones that you want to delete.

The delete tool also works for vanishing points as well. If you'd like to delete a vanishing point, you just go under Process > Delete Vanishing Point, and then just click on the point that you'd like to delete.

One more thing to note. If you're drawing and realizing that your lines aren't following the perspective grid, make sure that you have Snap to Special Ruler enabled. This is also helpful to turn on and off, if you’re drawing things that are not in line with the perspective ruler.

Planning Interior

Now that we have the basics of rulers down, let's start planning out the interior. Here, I'll go ahead and sketch out a desk in front of a window and play around with the posing a little bit, before I settle on a sleeping on the desk pose. Once I have my sketch, then I'll use the Perspective Grid ruler to create a perspective grid that works with my drawing. I'll correct some perspective here and there, and then start lining.

If you're following along, you can draw any interior scene, though since later on I use lighting reliant on light coming from the windows, if you want to follow along, you should include a window or lighting source of some sort. While I'm sketching this, I also want to add in some props to the desk so it's not totally empty, like a lamp.

In Clip Studio Paint, if you have the perspective grid enabled, you can also use the direct draw tools like rectangle, ellipse, or anything else on the perspective grid directly. Here, since I want to add a lamp, I'll plan the top and bottom of the lamp through drawing a circle, and it'll snap the grid automatically. The perspective grid direction it snaps to is dependent on the direction you're drawing in.

I'll go ahead and sketch in some more props. And then let's continue with the line art, and move into flat colors. Since I want to go for a really cozy and warm look, I tend to like to use wood in interiors to push the warm feeling a little bit. Since I have the perspective rulers enabled, all I need to do is pick a direction and then draw with a textured or low opacity brush repeatedly to get this effect of wood texture on the desk or other furniture.

While I'm picking colors and drawing furniture from imagination this time, if you're struggling with base colors, you can try looking at furniture, catalogs or photos for reference to piece together a scene that feels cozy for you.

Now that our base colors are done, for the background, I'll go ahead and draw in the props. I'll make sure that the perspective grid is enabled as I draw on things that align to the grid and turn it off for things slightly off the grid, like the papers or the curvature of the book. Speaking of books for the bookshelf, a method that I really like to use to paint bookshelves is to use the Calligraphy pen.

Here I'll change the angle of it so it generally aligns with the angle of the perspective and just draw in some book spines. Since the perspective grid is on, I can pretty much easily change the width of each book by just changing the size of the pen and drawing on my book spines. Next, on a new layer, I'll change the color to an off white and then draw on the book pages here following the perspective. Then on another layer behind those two layers, I add in the covers / sides in a darker color.

This method is great to draw books from a higher angle, especially since it shows the pages. And when you're done with this, you can just clean up the bookshelves by erasing the parts that aren't supposed to be visible.

Lighting

Now that we've finished our base colors, let's move on to adding some cozy lighting. So first, since I want the background to look a little bit more painted and softer, I plan on hiding the line art later. So what I'll first do is actually hide the base colors for the background, and then make a new layer, and then use the Refer to Other Layers fill bucket tool to fill in where I want the shadow to go.

This way I have really sharp shadows that align with the lines that we made earlier. I first fill in any surfaces that are facing away from the window, and then add in shadows at an angle, imagining the sun to be setting in the scene. I'm doing this all in a single layer, using a solid brown color to push the warm tones a little bit and then blurring the edges using the fingertip blend tool.

Once that's finished, I’ll set this to multiply, and now we have a nice shadow area blocked in. Since these shadows are really high contrast I can now comfortably hide the line art of the background and have it generally still look the same.

Now I'll repeat that, but with the character and props.

I'll fill the entire layer with the same brown color we used earlier, clip that to the character and then erase where I want there to be light.

Once that's done, I'll go ahead and select the area with both the shadows, inverse the selection, and then on a new layer, fill the entire layer with a light tannish color, and then set that to overlay. This creates a nice warm light effect on the areas where there aren't shadow.

For a final touch, I'll go ahead and add in some bounce light and reflections, including on the desk, reflecting the light from the windows on the floors, reflecting on the bookshelf and the wall next to the lampshade.Since I also think the skin is a little bit too pale I'll also add another multiply layer with a very light beige and clip that over the character.

Finish

And after adding some finishing touches, we’ve finished the illustration!

For a more detailed explanation, please see my video! Thank you!