Hi there!

Have you ever drawn something in your physical sketchbook and wished you could finish it digitally?

In this tutorial, you may find useful ways to turn your traditional sketches or even line art into fully rendered digital art. I’ll also go over how to add a digital background to your traditional art!

Here are some great reasons to digitalize your art:

 

✅ Preserve a sketch or line art before painting or coloring traditionally, in case of mistakes.

✅ Save a digital copy for mass printing.

✅ Enhance colors or effects with digital tools.

✅ Create hybrid art with traditional and digital elements.

 

The first step to all of this of course, is to get your traditional art into Clip Studio Paint! So grab your sketchbook and let’s go!

Note: I’m using Clip Studio Paint EX version 1 on PC.

Scanning Your Art. 💻

If you have a scanner, or have access to one somewhere, this is a great option to transfer a sketch or line art to your device and finish it digitally.

Most libraries have a scanner to use for a small fee. You can also look up local print shops near you and see if they can do photo copying.

 

Scanners are all different with different settings, programs, and adjustments, so I won’t cover much on how to scan your art here.

I don’t recommend scanning your photo using the Import > Scan function on CSP. Instead, use your device’s scanning software and save the file to your device. This way you can open or import it into Clip Studio Paint later and as many times as you like.

For a pencil or pen drawing, set your scanner output to black and white for the best result. It should be obvious, but you should only scan in color if you are scanning a colored artwork.

 

Also, for the best results of a pencil sketch, draw your lines dark. Lighter pencil marks are difficult to pick up on both a camera or a scanner.

You get even better results if you use pens, markers, and pen liners.

My scanner has multiple resolution outputs. It is perfectly fine to scan at something like 350dpi, but I prefer to scan in 600dpi or higher to get the best quality, just keep in mind this will increase the file size and may slow down your device significantly.

Anything lower than 300dpi is going to be low-quality and hardly useable.

 

You may also have the option to export the scan to JPG or PNG file format. If you want high-quality line work as it is, choose PNG format. If you are just importing a sketch to finish it digitally, it may not be necessary to save in the best quality.

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Scanner pros ✔:

Clear, bright images with little to no shadows or blur.

Can scan in black and white or color.

Can scan to high resolutions to preserve your art in high-quality.

 

Scanner cons❌:

May sometimes create a grainy picture or fail to capture small, intricate details.

Can leave artifacts like dirt or dust in the scan.

Colors do not always scan accurately and need adjustment.

High quality scanners can be expensive, and if there are no print shops available near you, it may be impossible to scan your art.

Taking Photos. 📸

If you don’t have a scanner, taking a photo of your work can work just as well in most cases.

 

Most people these days own a smart phone with a decent camera, so it is a very accessible and easy way to digitalize your art. Of course, if you do happen to own a high-quality digital camera, that’s even better!

 

The idea is to mimic a scanner to copy the image digitally.

Make sure you have sufficient lighting. If you have it, a bright light meant for photo shoots would be a great option. But most people don’t have access to that, so natural sunlight, or any other bright lighting will absolutely give the best results.

This can be done in a place with a large, open window that lets a lot of light in. If you have a place outside where you can set your art on a table or bench, it can work as a great spot to take your photo.

Just be careful of the wind!

Take your photos during the morning or late-afternoon when the sun is the brightest and highest, where it will cast less shadows and light the page without being too bright or dim.

 

Early afternoon could be too bright and wash out your art. Closer to evening might cause too much golden filter from the sun setting to appear on the page.

Be careful of shadows being cast when taking your photo!

Don’t stand in front of the sunlight and block it from reaching your art. Find a good angle to stand without casting a shadow. Or wait until a different time of day and try again.

You can also prop up your art against a wall, brick, or whatever you can find to try a better angle.

Make sure that the camera is level and parallel with the paper to avoid distortion of your artwork. Some phones have a level and ruler setting you can turn on that displays as you take the photo.

If you do find out the picture was distorted, you can try to adjust it by using the transformation tools in Clip Studio Paint to fix it.

Also, don’t worry about your art being perfectly in frame when taking the picture– you can crop out any unwanted background later.

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Camera pros ✔:

No costs compared to scanning, as everyone owns a smartphone.

Can get a high-quality image that captures detail well.

Quick and easy.

 

Camera cons ❌:

Could require a lot of touch up to look good.

Lighting and shadow can affect the quality of your photo.

Taking the photo at an angle can distort the image.

Could produce an unwanted blur effect if you have shaky hands.

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For a quick comparison, I took a photo and a scan of this drawing. The scan is on the left while the photo I took is on the right. I have not done any editing on them besides cropping the page.

The scanned art has great contrast, but the lines aren’t very crisp and look fuzzy. I had colored line art, so if I had scanned in monochrome, it may have come out clearer. But I would have lost my colored lines.

 

Meanwhile, the photo is really dark, but the lines look sharper than the scan.  It’s also hard to tell, but there is some perspective distortion between the two because it is difficult to take a level picture with the camera.

You can’t always choose the file format your camera saves a photo as, so it’s possible that the resolution could suffer.

 

Both options still work great of course! I’m only demonstrating the flaws and strengths to both. You don’t need anything fancy or expensive as long as you know how to clean it up well. Choose what works for you. :)

Below is the drawing I will be working on in this tutorial. I actually took a photo of it with my tablet. The camera quality is not great on this tablet... But I can still make it work!

💡 You can also digitalize your traditional art materials like decorative tapes, rubber stamps, or stickers to use regularly in your digital art too!

 

Even pencil or watercolor textures can be extracted the same way. Bringing your traditional art techniques to a digital canvas.

Opening your photo or scan. 📂

Okay! Now that we have our photo or scan on our device, let’s move on to the next step.

Here are two ways to get your photo or scan into CSP.

At the top of the program, click File > Import > Image.

This brings the photo in as an “image” type layer onto your open canvas. It preserves the quality when resizing your art if you need to.

 

Or

 

At the top of the program, click File > Open.

You can also click on the file folder icon in this shortcut bar here:

Choose the photo from the files on your device and it will open it in its own canvas.

From here, you could copy the image onto a different canvas, if you wanted.

 

This is useful if you want to make a high-res line art with a low-quality photo, simply copy the photo into the canvas you set with high dpi. You may have to resize the photo.

Adjustment for Digital Coloring. 📊

Both camera and scanner photos are usually not perfect to use as is and will need a little adjusting before working digitally on it.

 

If you want to digitally color your traditionally drawn line art, this step is important in cleaning up any imperfections created from a scanner or camera.

 

If you plan to draw over your art digitally (like a sketch, for example), you may not need to do too much adjusting, since you really just need it good enough for you to see and reference.

The desired result is to have the white of the paper as bright as it can be and the pencil/pen marks as dark and clear as they can be. There are a few ways to achieve this.

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Brightness/Contrast – This will adjust the brightness and darkness of the photo. Since photos are usually taken under natural light, and a lot darker than an average screen’s brightness, you have to brighten the photo to bring it to a “digital art” quality standard.

Binarization – This converts the photo to a monochrome state of black and white. It’s perfect for extracting line work. You can adjust the strength using the slider.

Level correction – This changes some of the above things all at once. Adjust the sliders until you get the best result. I find this to be the quickest and easiest, usually.

These editing options can all be found under Edit > Tonal Correction, by the way!

Alternately, you could use a correction layer with the same settings. But I prefer to edit the layer itself in this case.

 

I tend to use a combo of 1-2 out of these options and get the photo looking pretty good. It doesn’t take long and is quick to do! Just focus on getting a high contrast of black and white.

💡 By the way, if your smartphone has a good photo editing app, you can use that to touch up the photo in a similar way to the above process before bringing it into CSP. Try it out!

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Now for some extra steps to make our coloring easier…

Edit > Convert brightness to opacity – This will erase the white of the paper and leave only the darkest of lines. It will leave shadows cast in a photo, so it’s important to lighten it as much as possible before this step.

Layer > Convert layer > Vector – Finally, if you prefer to work with vector layers for line art (I do!), you can convert the layer into a vector. It seems to work well as long your art is high-res.

You can’t use the vector tools on this layer as accurately as a digitally drawn one, but it does help a little in cleaning up and adjusting the lines.

I like to use the vector tools like “correct line width” to thin out the line work, as it sometimes appears too big once it’s in a digital canvas.

 

You can also use it to add line weight to certain areas or clean up lines.

Here is the before and after of editing my photo:

Alright! Now we should be ready to paint!

Note: The pink line was colored on a layer above and was clipped to the line art layer below it.

Coloring! 🎨

Since the line work could still be a little blurry or jaggy, you can use one of these bucket tools to color in cleanly and quickly.

Close and fill and Anti-Alias fill buckets are great tools I use all the time!

They make filling in colors a breeze!

If you don’t have these bucket tools, you can make one. Copy a bucket sub tool and go into the settings.

 

Target color: Only transparent or only transparent and white.

Close Gap: 3 bars.

Tolerance: 30.0

Area-Scaling: 2.

Refer multiple layers.

 

Example below:

I would also recommend this tool, if you would rather have one ready to use:

 

 

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I quickly colored the inside of the line art in red using the close and fill tool by simply drawing a circle around the character.

Remember to check if any negative space was colored and fix it.

At this point I also fixed some mistakes I found in the line art as well, since the red made it easier for me to see.

Depending on how you like to render your art, this is a great way to get the base colored fast.

 

Next, I filled in all the base colors I want using the same bucket tool and started coloring like I usually do my digital art!

And here is the final result!

You would never guess it started on paper, right?

✨Adding Digital Background or Decorations to Traditional Art. ✨

This is an artwork I did traditionally in colored pencil. I’ve taken a photo and already adjusted the quality. I’m going to create a new digital background for it.

First, to erase the old background, I use the selection lasso tool and outline the character. Then click the “erase outside selection” button here:

That cleared most of the background quickly. I cleaned up the rest with the eraser tool.

Now that the character is separated, I can paste whatever I like in the background!

If you still want it to have a paper-y traditional feel, you can also paste some textures on top to recreate it.

I used the “fine texture” that came with the program. The “canvas” is texture is also a great choice.

Closing.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you learned something and have new ideas to try with your art.

If you have any questions, please feel free to comment. I would be happy to explain further!

And if you are interested in my art, you can check out the link below.

Have fun creating!

 

Until next time. ☆