Do you know how to use common blend modes like multiply, screen, and overlay? What about more uncommon ones likes divide? In this tutorial, I will explain how to utilize blend modes in your art and some tricks you can do with them you might not know about!

Introduction to Blend Modes

 

If you're new to Clip Studio Paint (or just digital art in general), you may have never used or heard of blend modes before. There are over 25 different options, and they all do something different depending on what colors you use! This can be intimidating for beginners, and leads to some people just ignoring them altogether.

 

If you're unfamiliar, blend modes are a layer setting that determines how one layer blends with the layer beneath it.

 

By default, higher layers in the panel simply "cover up" lower layers. This setting is called "normal." By changing it, you can create different effects!

Blend modes are non-destructive, meaning they don't permanent alter pixels on your canvas. If you don't like the way a layer looks when set to a different blend mode, you can always change it or set it back to normal.

Blend, Base, and Result Color

In this tutorial, I'll be talking about 3 different types of color:

 

1. Blend Color

2. Base Color

3. Result Color

The blend color is the color of the layer you have set the blend mode on, and the base color is the color underneath that the blend mode is affecting. The result color is the color made from combining these two.

Now, let's look into three common blend modes: multiply, screen, and overlay!

Multiply

Multiply, as expected from the name, multiplies the base and blend color to create a darker result color. This makes it perfect for creating dim lighting effects or shadow!

 

Here are the flat colors of my drawing.

First, create a layer above the coloring layer and set the blend mode to multiply, and turn clipping mask on.

Now, I can begin shading! When shading on multiply, you don't need to worry about the blend color being darker the base color, as the result will always be darker or equal. Here's what my picture looks like after shading and adding blush!

Using too dark of a blend color for multiply shading can result in harsh, muddy lighting. This could be what you're going for, but I generally use light to medium desaturated colors for shading.

Black on multiply will always produce black, and white will leave the illustration underneath unchanged. You can also try using this feature of multiply to turn traditional scanned line art digital, or to add noise and texture to your drawing with black and white assets!

Screen

Screen is the direct opposite of multiply. It lightens the base color by multiplying it with the blend color. This makes it perfect for highlights and effect lighting!

 

I'll use this to create hair highlights. Just like with my shading layer, I'll create a screen layer above and set my clipping mask. I don't need to worry about my blend colors being lighter than the hair color, so I'll select a bright, neon cyan and magenta to add some color variety.

Now, I'll apply the highlights as I would normally. The intensity of the screen layer can be adjusted by lowering the layer opacity. Here's what the picture looks like after.

White on screen will always produce white, and black will leave the illustration underneath unchanged. This is a good blend mode to use for adding snow and rain textures to the drawing, or adding a paper or watercolor effect!

Overlay

Overlay is the combination of both multiply and screen. Using this blend mode will make base colors lighter than the blend color lighter, and darker colors darker. This effect can be quite intense if the layer opacity is not lowered, but at a lower opacity it can balance out your colors and provide vibrancy.

 

I added light patches of pink, blue, and purple overlay to add a finishing touch and make the final illustration look softer and more visually interesting!

Other modes

These are just the most basic blend modes to try using- there are still 25 others for you to play around with! If that sounds intimidating, I'll break them down into 4 groups:

 

• Darkening

• Lightening

• Tinting

• Functional

 

These all perform similarly (with the exception of functional), so it's good to try using each of them to see what they do!

Darkening modes

Darkening blend modes darken the base color by some measure of the blend color. These modes are very suited for shading, mood lighting, contrast adjustment, and adding texture.

 

They include:

 

• Darken (darkens lighter colors with a mix of the blend color, leaves darker colors unchanged)

 

 

• Multiply (darkens all colors)

• Color burn (darkens the base colors by increasing the color contrast)

• Linear burn (darkens the base colors by decreasing the color brightness)

• Darker color (replaces lighter colors with EXACTLY the blend colors)

Lightening modes

Lightening blend modes all lighten the base color by some measure of the blend color. They can be used to create highlights, bounce lights, glowing and effect lighting, rim lights, and paper textures!

 

They include:

 

• Lighten (lightens darker colors with a mix of the blend colors, leaves lighter colors unchanged)

• Screen (lightens all colors)

• Color dodge (lightens the base colors by increasing the color contrast)

• Glow dodge (similar to color dodge but more intense)

• Add (lightens the base colors by increasing color brightness)

• Add glow (similar to add but more intense)

• Lighter color (replaces darker colors with EXACTLY the blend colors)

Tinting modes

Tinting blend modes adjust the colors and sometimes the contrast or brightness of your drawing. They're great for adding splashes of color and creating an overall mood to your colors, almost like glazing in oil painting.

 

These can sometimes be too intense to use at 100% opacity, so I would recommend starting with 10% and increasing or decreasing from there!

 

They include:

 

• Overlay (a mixture of multiply and screen that calculates with the base color)

• Soft light (a mixture of color burn and dodge that calculates with the blend color)

• Hard light (a mixture of multiply and screen that calculates with the blend color)

• Vivid light (a mixture of color burn and dodge that calculates with the blend color)

• Linear light (a mixture of linear burn and add that calculates with the blend color)

• Pin light (replaces colors based on the blend color)

Functional modes

Functional blend modes are more advanced, but I think they perform specific tasks that can be useful for spot tonal correction.

 

They include:

 

• Subtract (subtracts the blend color's value from the base color, makes result color darker)

• Difference (subtracts the blend color's value from the base colors, and merges it with base colors)

• Hard mix (adds the RGB color channel values of the blend color to the base color's)

• Exclusion (similar in effect to difference, but lower in contrast)

• Divide (divides the blend and base color, results in a lighter color)

 

This blend mode is great for removing color casts from images!

• Hue (adjusts the color values of the base colors with the blend color)

• Saturation (replaces the saturation values of the base color with the blend color)

• Color (replaces the color values of the base colors with the blend color)

• Brightness (replaces the brightness values of the base colors with the blend color)

Conclusion

There are plenty of advanced techniques you can perform with blend modes that you should be able to learn simply by understanding each function- they can be wonderful tools for you to use to even further improve your art!

 

I hope that these descriptions of each blend mode's function was helpful in understand how you can use them in your art. I think it's much easier to understand if you play around with them, but I hope this pushes you in the right direction!