OPENING…
Hello hello everyone,
Welcome to another tutorial article with me Daniel (Ado draw), I will be showing both new and old CLIP STUDIO PAINT (CSP) users as myself how I do pick or create the color palette for my illustration.
Today's article is titled:
Let's have a pop colorful illustration
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Now, before we get started unpacking how we can create our illustration make it pop out more colorfully using CLIP STUDIO PAINT handy features, we need to learn about the RGB and the CMYK to do that before, we need to first understand how to adjust or change the below aspect,
⚙️ CLIP STUDIO PAINT color conversion settings
RGB which simply (mean the red - green - blue) colors and this color set is mostly best for digital images that will be displayed on a screen, such as a computer, TV, tablet, or smartphone.
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Meanwhile,
CMYK stands for (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black) and this color set is ideal for designs that will be printed with ink, such as brochures, flyers, or business cards.
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The reason why I am bringing this aspect up is that for we to have or best grasp color functionality or what color is about to better know how to use them.
So now that we have known what RGB and CMYK, how do we set our CSP devices to suit what we have in mind to design which for today's tutorial is an illustration.
To be able to achieve what we have mentioned above, we first need to open up or run the CLIP STUDIO PAINT devices on either a smartphone, tablet or system which for this tutorial I will be using a [tablet] to create a unique colored illustration as shown below.
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To adjust the settings of your CSP settings to have a unique color expression, we start by opening a new canvas,
Click on the CLIP STUDIO PAINT logo on the top left side of the canvas indicated (1), a mini dashboard will appear, then select [preferences] option indicated (2) and beside it I shortcut code indicated (3) which when type also open the [preferences].
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Another mini dashboard will appear known the [preferences] dashboard among its options is the [color conversion] settings indicated (1), when it's selected, some selection options indicated (2) will be displayed with a side bar namely;
RGB profile - CMYK profile - Rendering intent and lastly Existing profile at time of saving.
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We can adjust the first selection option [RGB profile] to different selection options to which our exporting image appear as, but I mostly like this below sets of options 1,2 and 3,
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For now I will be making use of [3].
And for the second selection option which is known as the [CMYK profile] also having different selection options to which our exporting image appear as, whereas I often use the 1,2 and 3 below options, but for the purpose of today's tutorial, I am just going to use the number 1 settings.
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Next,
We will be looking at the kind of brushes I normally use for adding colors, color theories, CLIP STUDIO PAINT helpful and handy features, we also will be looking at how I manipulate lights and shadows with colors to give them a unique perspectives appearance.
Now let's go through the various aspects one at a time.
If I Know anything about myself of which I do, I am that kind of digital artist who is obsessed with trying to make his or her art piece realistic and often times I try avoiding the use of Saturated color in my art pieces cause before now I found it to be difficult as I do believe most of the young artists out there often feel this as well.
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But let me tell you now way I over come that faze in my art journey is by having a good understanding of colors (color theory) and setting some ground principles for myself to help me build up my art style.
Now if you are everybody or anybody going through this article right now, I believe the following will or may have run through you mind:
• What does he mean by setting principles is art that demanding?
• What should I do to better myself in add colors to my illustration to make it pop.
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This common ideas or questions are often considered, so in today's tutorial let's try brushing them.
🔲 Set principles
Now, know this that art in hole is very demanding, it's a skill that demands the creator to be skillfully kin on IQ, creativity, manipulation, frequent practice and the most important of them all, artists most be a person that frequent do Research and study on concepts and also have his/her own principles in order for he/her skills to grow.
Setting principles as an artist help control your actions on what to do and not to do like say example now I what to color a dice, without principles I can easily go astral and color the dice without multiple sets of colors making the piece unpleasant to the eyes as shown in [image below]
but with principles like say,
"Because cubes has 4 side so as I color this dice my color should not be more than 4”
With that in mind I can easily lay out my illustration make it have a simple contrast and pleasant to the eyes of the viewers as is the [image below].
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With that said, we have oversee one of the question ask.
Now, to better ourselves in adding of colors to our illustration in order to make it pop, we need to do research about color theory, light and shadow manipulation, and Lastly we need to note out some of CSP handy features which often makes illustration fun, easier and faster.
CSP over the years have made different sets of handy tools and features which as digital artist, we can easily utilize them to our advantage and in this case use them to create a fun pop out colorful illustration.
Now the following are the CSP handy tools and features I will be using for today's tutorial:
⚙️ CSP sub tool use for illustration creation
CSP have diversity of handy sub tool from pencil, pen to normal brushes and decorative brushes, but the set of sub tools I often use especially for coloring have the three following aspect or traits;
Soft edge - Hard edge - Mixing ability
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This various aspect help me in their own unique way, like take for example,
• The soft edge sub tool
Sometimes, I usually make use of a highly softer sub tool like the airbrush, while more at times I similar use a slightly soft edge sub tool like the Flat marker to create an illustration with an over lapping abilities.
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• The Hard edge sub tool
This sets of sub tools like say the milli pen and felt pen, I use to give my illustration a sharp look for easier comprehension.
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While for below set's of sub tool,
• The Mixing sub tool
This are the sets of sub tool with the ability to mix or combine colors to form the counter part, sub tool I often use for this is the round mixing brush.
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With the three above mentioned sets of CSP sub tools, one can create a unique illustration or semi realistic (stylish) illustration.
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Now this next aspect is very essential for young artists and this aspect is known as COLOR THEORY.
🔲 Have an understanding of Colors
When discussing about colors, we can do that without the mention of the color wheel...you know that round rainbow like icon which by default is located on the left side the CSP canvas,
Which if we want to manually open can do so by clicking on [window] indicated (1), a mini dashboard will appear then we can select the [Color wheel] option indicated (2) and the color wheel mini dashboard will appear indicated (3).
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🔷 Color theory
The term color theory may sound as an academic term which may come to us as a scary or difficult term, but essentially Color theory is basic term used for showing and understanding of how colors work together when they are mixed together and how the can also be paired together to produce a beautiful end products or harmonious results.
Harmonious color results are form sit beside or across each other on the COLOUR WHEEL and their work well together and create an image which is pleasing to the eye. Color wheel which is an important factor used coloring are made up of the following;
• The primary,
• The secondary and,
• The tertiary colors.
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Give me a slice of this pizza 🍕, I want one.
[COLOR WHEEL] in pizza format
🔷 Color combos
In color theory, a color scheme (which can also be known as color combos technique) is a combination of 2 or more colors used in aesthetic or practical design.
And the following process below are few of the ways to which one can create harmonious colorful illustration.
🔹 Monochromatic Colors
This sets of color scheme comprises of variations of one color. One can use any color to create a monochromatic color scheme.
For example, adding white to red creates pink, adding black to red creates maroon, etc. Then, we could have a monochromatic color scheme of blue,
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🔹 Analogous Colors
This are sets of color grouping has similarities. These color scheme types have close relationships to one another. Below are examples of an analogous color schemes: red, yellow and orange. Orange, yellow and green.
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🔹 Complementary Colors
This are two colors that are on opposite sides of the color wheel. This combination provides a high contrast and high impact color combination.
Hence, Think of complementary colors as "opposites attract." The classic examples of complementary color combinations are: purple t and yellow,
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🔹 Split Complimentary Colors
This are color schemes that consist of a base color and two colors adjacent to its complement.
Split complementary colors will always have a mixture of warm and cool shades. Two out of the three shades will be either cool or warm,
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For example, yellow and orange color (which are warm colors) act as the light and halftone color, meanwhile the blue color (which is a cool color) will act as the shadow color.
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🔷 Value
Value defines how light or dark a given color or hue can be. Values are best understood when visualized as a scale or gradient, from dark to light.
when we take a photo of our environment and the images is converted to black and white color gradient, we will notice that value plays important roles in the lay out environmental color arrangements from the grass to the trees and even the sky.
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The more tonal variants in an image, the lower the contrast. When shades of similar value are used together, they also create a low contrast image. High contrast images have few tonal values in between stronger hues like black and white which are natural colors.
In our color wheel, when we turn the color wheel grey, we will notice that some colors are made up of very lighter value indicated (A) like yellow, green and light blue, while others are made up of greyish indicated (C) like pink, red and orange, and some others are made of black values like dark blue indicated (B) as shown in the image below.
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As Artists, we should be able to understand ways to use value to create the illusion of light using different color and tonal values.
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Value is a very very important factor using highly contrast colors be it warm or cool colors as was shown in the above images.
Using that understanding and knowledge of how value works, we can easily use warm colors for the main color and the cool color for the shadows and also it can be done vise-verse.
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Understanding how value works is a key factor to know how to choose bold colors from the color wheel.
🔲 Build up of colorful Lighting and Shadowing
Even without the know of art, we as human do know that for we to see we need lights from either a nature or artificial source and where there is light their are shadows,
Hence, light and shadow also play a very important and unique role in coloring of an illustration be it a Black and white color illustration or a colorful illustration.
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When we create a Bold colors illustration or a colorful illustration, highly saturated colors can be used for the shadow areas, be it a warmer color or a cooler color which best emphasize the colorful ness of the illustration as shown in the below image.
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⚙️ How I use CSP handy features to create a bold colorful illustration
CSP over the years have made different sets of handy tools and features which as digital artist, we can easily utilize them to our advantage and in this case use them to create a fun pop out colorful illustration.
Now the following are the CSP handy tools and features I will be using for today's tutorial:
🔷 Use of Blending modes
Csp offers a total of 26 blending modes which are divided into five sections for ease understanding.
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Blending modes let you vary the ways that the colors of objects blend with the colors of underlying objects.
Even as a beginner, one can add colors easily to ones illustration using this process with the use of [Blending modes].
Looking the multiple sets of blending modes available we may think using them to create a bold colorful illustration will be difficult but am here to tell you that the process is easier than you think.
To start, we first need draw out the line art of the character which in this case is a female character indicated (3) with a sport wear t- shirt and my favorite number engraved on the shirt and behind her, set the [blending mode] indicated (1) of the line art layer indicated (2) to [multiply] as shown in the image below.
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🔷 Use of Color mixer
The color mixer is a very handy tool which helps artist in picking suitable color for the color palette which the can use for adding beautiful color combination for our illustration. This set of CSP features is mostly used at the beginning before the creation of an illustration and to be able to use this set of CSP features, we first need to locate it, which can be done by doing the following:
Click on [window] indicated (1), a dashboard will appear click on [Color Mixing] indicated (2), then a mini dashboard will be display,
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With the mini dashboard, we can add and mix different sets of colors from the primary colors down to the tertiaries, using the mini set of marker sub tool in the color mixing dashboard, we can add and mix colors together to give their counter parts, we can also adjust the size of the marker tool.
Using the clearing icon indicated (1), we can quickly erase the entire colors in the color mixing dashboard, we can as well use the blending sub tool indicated (5) to blend colors in the color mixing dashboard together and using the eyedropper icon indicated (7) to pick out the necessary colors we need from the color mixing dashboard and add them to our illustration.
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We can also use the color sets indicated (10) to pick the colors to mix and the plus sign to add colors to the color sets as she above.
Now thanks to the set of CSP features, color picking for color palette has never been more easier, hence we can easily note our colorful sets of colors to use for our illustration.
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Move on to the next CSP useful features which is known as the BLENDING MODES.
Create 6 new layers clip the top 5 layers to the bottom 1 remaining layer indicated (2) with in the [blending mode] indicated (1) of each of the layer set to [Normal], use the lasso fill tool to fill bold color set select as a color palette for illustration,
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Create another new layer indicated (2) set it [blending mode] indicated (1) to [Color dodge] and use the lasso tool select the flat color of the character and fill in a brown color, after that is done, we can erase the parts of the character we want the lights reflect on indicated (3).
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Next, we create another layer, set the [blending mode] to [Saturation] again, then add some more darker blue to the form shadows at the back side of the female character.
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Now, will the light and shadow area applied to the illustration, the illustration will now appear as a 2D (2 dimensional) illustration as we can see below,
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Following the above mentioned,
Create another new layer indicated (2), set the [blending mode] indicated (1) to [Saturation], add some shade reflection on both the face of the character and the background indicated (3).
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And finally this aspect of the tutorial I really enjoy doing,
We create another layer above all the other layer indicated (2), set it's [ blending mode] to [Normal] indicated (1), then use the flat marker sub tool to add some details to the character like strains of hairs, edge highlights on the skin of the character to give the character a kind of glow effect indicated (3).
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And with the above done, we have a 3d format of our female character, is the creation process easy or what. Below is the finish master piece.
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🔷 Use of filter effect
And the last but not the least CSP handy features I use is known as the FILTER EFFECT.
This sets of CSP features as usually used after or at the end of the illustration to make the illustration appear more sharper or softer or even giving it a unique chromatic effect.
Say we want give the above image a chromatic and sharp effect.
🔹 Flattening of the multiple sets of layers to one
Merging all the layer of the illustration turning all the layer into one is done by first press any of the layer for a short period and letting go, a mini dashboard will appear at the bottom we will locate the [flatten image] selection option, click on it,
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Then all the layers will become merged together to become one.
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Next,
🔹 Giving the illustration a chromatic effect
Click on [Filter] indicated (1) > [Effect] indicated (2) > [chromatic aberration] indicated (3),
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Set the [Mode] to [Radial (use center point)] indicated (1), I then set the [intensity] to [57] indicated (2) and I then set the [Angle] to [-129] indicated (3), then we click on [OK] indicated (4).
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The chromatic abbreviation effect will then be reflected onto the illustration.
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🔹🔹 Giving the illustration a Sharp effect
Click on [Filter] indicated (1) > [Sharpen] indicated (2) > [Sharpen more] indicated (3),
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When the [Sharpen] effect is enable, it helps in enhancing the contrast of the image borders and colors as we can easily notice in the image below.
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🔷 Use of Color match [Image]
With the color match [image], we can easily change the color of our illustration in a unique way to mimic and image color pattern.
Click on [Edit] indicated (1) > [Tonal correction] indicated (2) > [Color Match] indicated (3),
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A mini dashboard will appear with multiple sets of images to choose from which I number 1 to 9.
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Now, each of the numerous images affects our illustration in their own unique way,
Like for example 1 to 4 affect the illustration as shown in the image below.
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Meanwhile, 5 to 8 affect the illustration as shown in the image below.
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And the most beautiful thing is that we can also extract the color of an image we like by clicking on the [photo icon] indicated (2) with an arrow pointing out,
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we will be taking to our gallery where we can then import the image we want to our illustration.
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The image will be imported to the [image] dashboard as an icon indicated (1), and to apply the color, click on OK indicated (2), the color adjustment will then reflect on the illustration indicated (3).
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And that is one way I change the colors of my illustration but say you find the color arrangements not well arranged, we can use the following aspect to change the color arrangements.
🔷 Use of color match [gradient]
This aspect allows users to easily rearrange the position of each graded colors, to achieve this we first need to locate the gradient dashboard which can also be located by the left of the [Color Match] indicated (1), after selecting the color gradient (which in this case is the drawing color), Using the little icon at the [grading bar] indicated (2) we can rearrange the colors of illustration to give it the color arrangements we want, then we can click on [OK] indicated (3).
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After the above mentioned is done, we can also be able to change the female character color gradient to either image A to Image B.
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If you find the above explanation of adding gradient to illustration not ok, you can also go through the below article.
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CLOSING
Thanks everyone for going through the tutorial article, hope it has help you out color theory understanding and ways to to pick out your color palette, as it has always been pointed out to better know something you need practice, so try practicing the very aspect discuss above. For now I will be signing out, byeee.
