How to use Clip Studio Paint to turn photos into paintings | Clip Studio Paint tutorial

Hello! Little cutie

I am Comic Black Rainbow.

If you are someone who doesn't like to draw backgrounds from scratch, I believe you have the same idea as me.

Just use the photo as the background😆

Unfortunately, after trying to create this, my experience has shown me that realistic backgrounds do not match the things I draw.

So I rarely create like this.

But this year's New Year I came to Xiamen, I saw some beautiful but complicated lantern street scenes.

It makes me want to try to see how it works with photos!

Spend a day or two during the New Year holidays, I focus on solving problems and obstacles encountered during the painting process.

The result this time was unexpectedly much more successful! ha!

So of course, I have to share it with you right away.

How I used Clip Studio Paint to create a simple background and use this photo as the background to create a Dragon Year greeting card!

Further reading you might find interesting:

• 3 elements + 1 composition, let you easily draw various forest scenes!

First, I went to the place where the New Year lantern street scene was to take pictures. When I saw the street scene, I already had a picture in my mind. Of course, the picture in our mind is actually very vague, which is why we need to use hand painting to visualize the picture in our mind. Painting is to visualize our imagination and emotions 😃😃! So I took a few photos with very similar angles and a few photos with angles that appeared in my mind as materials for later drawing. They were all taken with an iPhone 12. I didn't adjust the lighting. After all, I would adjust the lighting based on the pictures later. So there is no need to adjust the lighting at this stage. I think that unless you plan to publish your photography works and then adjust the lighting, even if you adjust the photos to be beautiful at this stage, it may not be useful for drawing.

Now that we have some photos as creative materials, we can now use them to cook!

1. Draw the composition

Once we have the photos, we can directly draw the pictures in our minds on the photos. Of course, you may encounter some difficulties in drawing here. If you want to know how to draw the pictures you want to draw and present, you can participate in the one-hour free course specially prepared by me! Learn how to free your imagination and draw your creativity!

At this stage, you can boldly unleash your imagination and draw the images in your mind. It doesn't matter if you draw several versions! Because sometimes when we are creating, there will be a lot of inspiration scattered through our minds. If we don't draw it quickly, it is easy to miss some good ideas. So at this time, I drew two versions of the draft.

The draft on the right is a backup of the draft on the left, mainly because I usually draw mainly characters and have little experience in drawing dragons. I was not completely sure about the angle of the dragon in the left draft at the time, so I drew an angle that I thought would be easier to draw and look better to see how it would turn out. As a result, the picture I drew showed the girl looking at the dragon, and no one around saw the dragon. It felt like I had encountered an elf and soothed my loneliness, but it was New Year's Day!!! So in the end I chose to challenge the draft on the left, which can better present the festive and lively New Year atmosphere that I wanted to present!

2. Photo illustration

Entering the stage of photo illustration, I used Clip Studio Paint to do simple photo processing. First, I used the "Illustration Style" filter effect. The reason why photos cannot be directly applied to paintings is mainly because they are too realistic. As for painting creation, the reason why painting is fascinating is that painting removes the dross and retains the essence of the picture, omitting many details, leaving the essence, and adding the creator's expression and painting habits. So here we are not trying to make the photos more complicated, but to make them simpler! So here I used an illustration filter to make the photo simpler! So when I use the illustration filter, I will cancel all the lines and make the picture look like a block of color. But I found that in the color level of Clip Studio Paint, even if it is pulled to the lowest level, the picture still looks relatively complicated 😅, so if I want a more painting feel, I need to use paint to make local adjustments.

After several adjustments, I found that Clip Studio Paint's illustration filter would cause the brightness of the picture to fluctuate due to the adjustment of color levels, so in the end I had to choose a brighter brightness and then adjust the level that would make the picture have a more blocky feel. Of course, after the adjustments, I also adjusted the brightness and overall color to make the picture redder and warmer!

3. Draw the line drawing

Next, it's time to draw the line drawing! If you like impasto and have advanced painting skills, this part can be omitted 😆. On the one hand, impasto does not necessarily require prior line drawing. People with good drawing skills can paint directly. On the other hand, as long as the drawn picture does not look inconsistent and the color matching can be integrated with the photo, it does not matter whether the line drawing is drawn or not. But because I planned to use a less complicated cel style before the complex background, and I had no experience in drawing dragons, I still drew the line draft to be safe.

4. Coloring

After we have completed the line drawing, the next part that requires some brainpower and painting skills is the color and light and shadow part! In terms of the color of this picture, because the saturation of the photo itself is already very high, it is best not to increase the saturation, otherwise, the whole picture will cause visual fatigue. So here, I use colors that are as close to the background color as possible and even reduce the saturation to color it. For the dragon and the girl in the front to create a festive atmosphere for the New Year, I still use red as the main color. As for the background crowd, I believe that many people are troubled by their hair color and clothing color. Here I use a little trick: after painting the colors of the first two or three people, if you feel that the overall color is still peaceful, the colors of the characters behind can be matched with the colors of the first two or three people! This way, even if there are a lot of people later, it won't look too messy after coloring.

As for the light and shadow part, the whole row of lanterns on the left is the part with the strongest light, so in terms of light and shadow, I personally boldly painted the shadows! I know that many people are afraid of drawing shadows on the front of important objects, but this is wrong. The more afraid you are, the less likely you are to objectively draw good-looking light and shadows. So sometimes, bravely breaking through your discomfort will lead to some surprising discoveries!

5. Light and shadow decoration

After we had almost finished the overall painting, I always felt like something was missing, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I wondered if it was because there weren't enough details or something like that. But based on experience, it's not a matter of details 😆, so I didn't even waste time trying to add details to the characters or the dragon. I directly added halos and light spots based on the overall picture, and the whole picture looked brand new! So I didn't hesitate and added some red debris like the ones after firecrackers were set off, and then added text and it was done!

After this successful attempt to create photos, suddenly, creating through photos no longer felt so impossible.

Fortunately, the filter effect of Clip Studio Paint does not make the picture too blocky and simple.

Otherwise, I might draw it in a more complicated way.

That may be another painting problem to overcome.

In short, I'm very happy to share with you the whole process of using Clip Studio Paint to turn photos into paintings. I hope that the above sharing can help you try different methods and techniques when creating. If you have other questions, you are welcome to leave a reply below, use social media private messages, or email me! I look forward to seeing you draw beautiful paintings from photos in your daily life in the future!