Hey, there! I’m Sarah, and I’m going to show you my process for creating an ooey-gooey sweet treat in Clip Studio Paint!

Base Sketch and Preparation

First I decided on what kind of sweet treat I wanted to draw, then looked up some references, sketched out my basic layout and placement, and added a little nibbling elf creature — because why not?

 

 

I used the symmetry ruler to make both sides of the cupcake liner even.

Line Art

When you are done with the ruler, you can turn it off by right-clicking on the ruler icon in the layer and toggling Show Ruler from the menu.

If you noticed, I am using vector layers for my line art. This is because I like how you can erase up to the intersection of lines so easily, and you can even use the Object tool to select a single line and tweak its position if you made a nice line that’s in slightly the wrong spot!

To make a vector layer, click on the New Vector Layer button that’s just to the right of the New Raster Layer.

Colors

When my lines are satisfactory, I use the Magic Wand tool to select the area outside of the subject I want to color, then put a Clipping Mask on my colors folder so all of the colors stay in the lines.

I put each of my different areas of color into separate layers so that it’s easy to tweak the colors if I don’t like my first pick or need to adjust the levels to harmonize better. (Example: the icing in its own layer, the cake in its own layer, and the cupcake liner in its own layer.)

 

 

I stepped fully into the dark chocolate decadence of my cupcake and decided to get a little fancy with some salt granules on top. I used the Small Stone special brush — I can’t remember if that one is in the preset materials, or if you have to look in Clip Studio Assets for it, but it’s kind of handy for more than just stones sometimes.

I used the airbrush on No Color to fade some parts of the salt, and used a multiply layer over the top, clipping it to the salt layer to tweak the color.

 

 

Then I used Multiply and Glow layers to add the shadows and lighting to the cupcake.

When I turned my salt layer back on, it looked TERRIBLE, so I had to rearrange the layer order and tweak the colors again.

Background and Extras

I used the Gradient tool to fill in a simple background, then copied the cupcake layers folder and inverted it with the Transform tool to make a reflection.

I liked how it looked, so I finished coloring the little elf person, too, and copied that whole layers folder to make a reflection with, too.

I had to double the elf’s reflection up and erase and blend part of it to get the foot to look natural-ish, so then I just blurred all of the reflection with the Motion Blur — both to make it more shiny-reflection-looking, and to hide any wonky blended spots.

 

 

(Note that anytime I do anything to the layer itself that I’m working with, versus using another layer on top of it, that I copy the original layer first so that I can just start over if I make a huge mistake that would take too long to undo or fix.)

 

 

Then I add finishing touches (Add Glow Highlights for extra shininess, put my artist signature on it, etc.), and it’s done!

I want a gooey dark chocolate cupcake sooooo badly, now… haha!

 

 

If you’re struggling with your own dessert drawings, don’t get discouraged! Keep practicing drawing sweets and other treats from real life, or from photographs, and looking at how your favorite artists translate things, until you start to like your pieces better. Honestly, I kind of surprised myself with how much I liked how this drawing turned out — I hadn’t tried to draw food in MONTHS — so you might just surprise yourself someday, too! It’s no good to compare your work with other artists’, but you can always compare your work NOW to your work from BEFORE and be proud of the progress you’ve made. :)

 

Happy drawing!