Digital Painting in Clip Studio - Working in Perspective

In this lesson you will learn how to thumbnail out a rough sketch or idea of what we will be painting. This is a very important step in any illustration. You must work out as much of an idea as you can in this very loose fashion to save time and focus on being creative. I show you how you can actually get in a lot of the information even in this very small sketch. You will also learn techniques for adding depth to the scene. We will also talk about some things to be aware of when designing your composition. The importance of this method is that by drawing the ideas so quickly you can identify problems areas before creating a bad illustration. We will then take one of the three rough sketches and refine the line work to get ready for painting.

In this lesson we will take our rough sketch and add a three point perspective guide to start cleaning up the line work. You will also learn how to enable the show grids option to help visualize the work. You will learn how to clean up the line work and add in various angles as well as draw the structures in perspective. We will also talk about how to not over detail the drawing at this stage since we will be taking this to paint. We will also talk about adding in some details freehand to stylize the drawing and not get something that is overly structured.

In this lesson you will learn how to create selections from your sketch and lay in the base paint work. We will use the Polyline tool to create the shapes of the buildings and the layers to organize the work. You will also learn how to create groups and organize your layers to save space and time later in the illustration. Setting up your work properly can can make your life a lot easier if a client needs revisions, which they often do.

In this lesson we will go back to the sketch layer and start to add in more information to our design. We will use the perspective guides as well as the shift + click method to draw various angles in and out of perspective. We will focus on adding in details to the front main structure. We will also cover how to add depth to the various part of the building by showing raised and inset details.

In this lesson we will add more details to the sketch for the back buildings. We will also talk about adding areas of contrast in shape and design. You will also learn more on how to use the perspective guide as a visual reference without the snap to feature enabled. Using the tools in a variety of ways will speed up your work and lend to your creativity. We also will cover staging the work to save time as well as timing your work to be realistic of what a project may take you to complete.

In this lesson we will use the Polyline tool and the layers to create window shapes for our buildings. We will also talk about how the shapes we are creating give us more room to freely edit the work by creating additional masking opportunities. 

In this lesson you will learn how to crop the image and up the resolution without hurting any of the current setup. Then we will use the "Lock Transparent Pixel" feature and start to add in painting effects. We will also talk about creating quick selections and adding shadows to define plane changes in the buildings. You will then learn how to take your existing window shapes and create the inset to the windows. This can be a great way to create a clean drop shadow effect to areas of your structure.

In this lesson you will learn how to create and apply window textures to the existing shapes. You will learn how to copy and edit the shapes to create variety in the design of the windows. I talk to you about recycling your own artwork to save time in your illustration work. You will learn how to edit and distort the texture into perspective to apply it to the window shapes.

In this lesson we will add some painting effects to our window shapes and textures and check the look of our work before committing the time to finish all the other windows. Learning to look ahead in the process is a key part of completing work on time and getting the effect you art after. After we are satisfied with the look of our window concept we will add in the rest of the textures to the center building.

In this lesson you will learn how to change the lighting of the scene. We started with the idea of painting the shadows at the bottom but we are now going to change it to a night time effect. So we will be lighting the structures from the bottom. This is easy to do when the work is separated in layers and groups. You will also learn how to add stars in the night sky with the particle brush settings. We will then define the plane changes on the other structures with the selection tool and some soft brush effects and blending modes.

In this lesson you will learn how to create the inset effect on the other buildings but this time we will use the shift click line method behind the window shapes. I want to show you that there are many different ways to accomplish each task in a program like this. So that you start to think creatively when making these effects. We will also apply the window textures to the back buildings.

In this lesson we will paint in some additional soft brush effects in the window shapes and the window textures. Using the "Lock Transparent Pixel" feature makes this very easy to do. We also make some changes to the background shape and work on the overall composition. Then I go over how to use the "Hue-Saturation-Brightness" sliders to make changes to the work.

In this lesson you will learn how to use the blending modes to apply additional shadows and highlights to the existing work. We will use the blending mode "Multiply" to add shadows consistently over the existing paint work on the buildings. Then we will use the blending mode "Add Glow" to create highlights on the buildings. Then we will create bevels on the structures with an added light source. Using a new layer to apply the effect over the trim of the building. It also allows us to erase parts of the bevels back so that the effect isn't too distracting.

In this lesson you will learn how to apply lights to the structures. We will first cover how to apply the lights over the exiting paint work on the center building by using the brush "Combine Mode" or "Blending Mode". Then I will show you how to add the lights on a separate layer and control the effect with the layer "Combine Mode". Then we will take the lights and copy them to reuse on the other side of the illustration to save time.

In this lesson we will add some atmospheric lighting to the scene. Then we will do some final edits to the work. At the end of each painting I like to create a copy of the work and merge it all together to make some final adjustments. We will blur some of the edges using the "Gaussian Blur" to add a bit of realism. I will also show you some ways to edit the painting even after it has been merged together using various selections and brush techniques.