I’ve used the pen tool with the G-pen nib in Clip Studio Paint in this drawing of Kershaw’s Newsagents, Horbury, in 1938. The effect is very similar to my regular pen and ink drawings, although bringing the whole drawing together wasn’t so straightforward; although I appreciated being able to zoom in on the different sections of the drawing as I worked, this did mean that it felt a bit like working on a jigsaw: I’d concentrate on one area, such as an edge, but I’d lose sight of the picture of a whole as I did that.
Adding colour was also unfamiliar to me, compared with using my watercolours. I’ve stuck to one brush to get the feel for that particular setting, but the result feels like colouring using a felt-tip pen.
The whole exercise has been useful for getting used to the range of marks that I can produce with pen and brush in the program. I’m sure that I’ll find it useful.
This digital painting has turned out looking like the starting point for one of my acrylic on hardboard paintings, before I’d started adding details of tree, water and ferns.
Coxley Beck is running opaque with sediment where it passes through an old mill race at Horbury Bridge. I’ve draw this on my iPad Pro, using an Apple Pencil in the Clip Studio Paint program.
I pasted a photograph that I’d taken this afternoon into the lowest layer of my Clip Studio Paint document, then added a layer for pencil above it. So that I could see where I was going with the pencil, I partially faded out the photograph by using the opacity slider for that layer.
I traced the trees and the line of the beck in pencil, then hid the photograph by clicking its eye symbol in the layer palette and drew using the pen tool, using my pencil tracing as a guide.
Paint Layer
Once I’d finished with the pencil layer, I hid it and added a new layer for paint. In order not to paint over my pen lines, I added the paint layer below the pen layer.
As I worked, I kept referring back to the photograph layer, now with the opacity slider set back at 100%, and used the eye-dropper tool to sample colour. I couldn’t always get the colour that I wanted, so I also used some of the standard swatches and the colour wheel.
In the odd spots that I hadn’t painted, the default white background of what Clip Studio refers to as ‘paper’ showed through, making Coxley Beck look more sparkly than it actually does this afternoon, so I added a background layer of a suitably muddy brown.
Pen, initial pencil sketch and first attempts at adding colour.
It reminds me of when I painted in acrylic and I’d start by paintingthe whole canvas in a neutral light grey, so that I wasn’t misled when mixing tones by a brilliant white background.
I used various digital pens, finishing up with the textured pen and various versions of the watercolour brush, including dense watercolour.
I look forward to trying the technique with another subject.
Pencil, ink, colour and layout produced using an Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro in the Clip Studio Paint program. I’d struggle to draw frames as neatly as this by hand.
Continuing on my learning curve with Clip Studio Paint, this doodle is a real achievement as I’ve now worked out how to lay out a comic strip using the program on the iPad. As you create the frames, you can set it so that the program creates a separate image folder for each frame.
Why should that be an advantage? Well, if you’ve ever drawn a comic strip by hand, using a ruling pen to draw the borders, you’ll know that you have to take care not to go over the line when you’re drawing, otherwise you’re giving yourself extra work going round with the Tippex to clean things up before publication (or the Photoshop equivalent of Tippex).
If you need a drawing to run through adjacent frames – for instance in a scene where figures move through a landscape – you can set things up so that several frames, or the whole page, share the same folder.
Drawing all those frames for my flick-book cartoons has helped me to feel at ease using Clip Studio Paint on the iPad. One advantage the iPad is that you can zoom in to work on details with a pinching movement of two fingers and you can rotate the whole drawing, simply by rotating two fingers. These two actions were useful when it came to writing in all the titles of the books.
Once the iPad knows that you’re drawing with an Apple Pencil, it rejects any finger movements it detects as drawing but still responds to any gestures, such as rotation and zooming in.
Paper, Pen & Pencil
There are four layers in my original Clip Studio file: the default paper background (plain white); pencil, for my initial drawing; colour, using the watercolour brush and pen, using the ‘real G-pen’.
To make it more like a real sketchbook drawing, I left my original pencil lines visible. If I’d been aiming for finished-looking illustration, I could have removed all the pencil work with a single click of the mouse: no meticulous rubbing out with a soft art eraser.
I’ve learnt a lot since my first attempt at a flick-book style animation using Clip Studio Paint. It’s such a versatile program, something like Photoshop but aimed specifically at comic artists illustrators but, with so many possibilities, I can’t hope become familiar with it all in just a few sessions.
Mugshot
I’m sticking to the basic process that worked for me in the first animation and gradually building up my skills from there. My main advance here was adding the coloured background.
As I experimented with the settings of the animation cels, the ‘undo’ button came in handy or more than one occasion but that’s a good way to discover aspects of the program: for instance its ability to output drawings as a half-tone made up of dots. It would be great for a wanted poster or a newspaper cutting in a comic strip story. Judging by that photograph, he’s definitely guilty.
Clip Studio Paint offers the possibility of animating drawings and, since there’s now a new version of the program for the iPad, I thought that it was time to give it a go.
This rotating head is my first attempt. The layers have a degree of transparency, so that I can see my previous drawing, as a fainter, bluer image, as I start on the next frame.
Onion Skinning
It’s like the traditional animator’s light-box, what’s sometimes referred to as onion skinning: viewing several frames at once.
I drew the animation test (above) using the Clip Studio pencil tool then went over it with the pen tool (right) trying to make a few corrections as I went.
As I’m still not up to speed in Clip Studio Paint, I export an animated GIF from Clip Studio to Adobe Photoshop CS5 for the final adjustments of repeating the eight frames in reverse order to make a continuous loop and cropping the final image.
I still need to work out the best way to add pen and colour layer to each frame, but that’s as far as I’m going with this head: something went wrong with the eyes!
As the light faded, I drew one of the ash trees at the edge of the wood using a new version of Clip Studio Paint for iPad. For the next few weeks, there’s an opportunity to give it a six month free trial.
It feels so much more direct than using the iPad with a wifi link to the same program running on my main computer and I appreciate the thought that has gone into redesigning the interface to make it more suitable for a tablet.
I started with a pencil drawing then, on a new layer, added a suggestion of colour, finishing with an ink layer for drawing with the G-pen.
It’s been a month since we had a weekend at home and my desk top is in need of sorting out but how could I resist drawing these tottering piles of books and magazines?
I’ve drawn it with an Apple Pencil on my iPad Pro. I’m using is Clip Studio Paint EX on my iMac, which is connected to the iPad by wifi through the program Astropad 3. Sometimes pen and sketchbook just isn’t enough!
I like trying to learn new programs and I thought that the best way was just to launch into it and do the simplest of drawings. I say ‘new’ programs but I’ve been trying to get proficient in Clip Studio Paint, formerly Manga Studio for the last five years.
I’ve often drawn the view from my studio window before but this is the first time I’ve drawn it using an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil.
Once again I’ve got it connected to my iMac and the point of the exercise is to become more familiar with the comic drawing program Clip Studio Paint. So, I’m using a different virtual nib with the pen tool today; the turnip pen, which I leave set to size 5.
I add the watercolour on its own layer, which I keep behind the pen layer.
I add the colour using the brush tool set to transparent watercolour. The way I’m using the brush tool makes it feel more like a marker pen filled with watercolour. I notice that if I hold the Apple Pencil at an angle I can get a blended effect and tone down my initial brushstrokes.
Autodesk SketchBook
I drew the vase using Autodesk SketchBook. It’s designed with a touchscreen in mind which is probably why I find that colour selection is more intuitive than Clip Studio Paint but I want to stick with the latter as it offers so much more when it comes to page layout for comic strips.
I’ve drawn my hand here using an iPad Pro connected to my iMac. It doesn’t feel as responsive as pen on paper but there isn’t a significant delay as I draw with an Apple Pencil.
I’m using a program called Astropad which is designed to enable you use your iPad as a graphics tablet. This has an advantage over the Wacom tablet that I use, as the drawing is there on the tablet as well as on the big screen.
I’ve got various sketching apps on my iPad but I’m drawing this using the comic strip drawing program Clip Studio Paint which I’d like to get more familiar with so that I can use it for my walks booklets and local history publications.
Adding colour was also unfamiliar to me, compared with using my watercolours. I’ve stuck to one brush to get the feel for that particular setting, but the result feels like colouring using a felt-tip pen.
