Hello! My name is Liz Staley and I’m a long-time user of Clip Studio Paint (I started using the program back when it was known as Manga Studio 4!). I was a beta-tester on the Manga Studio 5 program and for Clip Studio Paint, and I have written three books and several video courses about the program. Many of you probably know my name from those books, in fact. I write weekly posts on Graphixly.com and on CSP Tips, so be sure to come back every week to learn more Clip Studio Tips and Tricks from me!

Sometimes you may need to add a little color variation to a vector drawing, but you want to keep the vector information instead of rasterizing the layer. Though Clip Studio Paint doesn’t have the robust shading and gradient tools of Adobe Illustrator and the like, it is possible to do some basic effects like this with a bit of ingenuity!

In this article we will cover the following topics:

Adding Shading with Vector Paths

Creating Gradients with Vector Opacity

Let’s play with vectors!

Adding Shading with Vector Paths

The vector lines below were done using the yarn brush by CSP User ゆもり , and can be found at the link below. 

https://assets.clip-studio.com/en-us/detail?id=2101779

I love the texture this yarn brush gives, but some shading and highlighting will take it to the next level and give the logo more dimension. To keep the benefits of using vectors, I’ll need to keep the shading to vectors as well, so this will take a bit of trickery!

I selected the path I want to start with, then copied it and pasted it to a new Vector layer above the original vector layer. This new vector layer is also set to the Multiply blending mode.

With the copy selected, look in the Tool Settings window. Turn down the Brush Size option to the size of the shadow you want. 

I want these shadows to be soft and have some color variation so in the Brush Shape option I chose the Watercolor setting. 

I don’t want the shadow to show where the yarn isn’t, so right-click the shading layer and go to Layer Settings - Clip to Layer Below so the shadow will only show where there is content on the layer below it. 

Set the shading layer to Multiply, then use the Control Point tool to move the shadow line around so that it’s on the shadowed side of the line. The light source in my image is at the top left so I’m moving my shadow down and to the right.

For lines that loop around, like these strands of yarn do, you may need to break your line into different pieces to get the shadows in the right place. You can see below that the shadow starts at the correct spot at the top of the loop, but on the right side it goes through the middle of the yarn strand. 

In the Tool Settings of the Control Point tool, select the “Split Line” option. Then click where you want to break the vector line. 

Now you can edit the control points of the new line segment and move them to the correct position, or delete segments of the line that aren’t needed (in my case, where the yarn is overlapped by a different strand!).

Creating Gradients with Vector Opacity

Another challenge of this design is that parts of it need gradients, but of course since it’s also a logo those gradients need to be vector as well to preserve the ability to resize the logo for different applications. This also requires a bit of ingenuity but thanks to CSP’s vector tools it’s not difficult!

To start, put all the vector layers for the logo into a layer folder together.

Now make a new vector layer outside of the folder with the other logo layers in it. This layer should be right above the layer folder. Right-click the gradient layer in the Layer palette and go to Layer Settings - Clip To Layer Below. Because the layer below is the folder, our gradients will be clipped to the entire logo.

Next take a pen tool (I used the Felt Pen under the Marker category to get a big bold line of flat color at first) and make a stroke for each part of the gradient. Mine needs to go from red to blue to yellow, back to red, then to orange, green, and back to red again. 

Instead of just relying on the vector opacity tool to do the blending, I also selected all the strokes of color for my gradient and then, in the Tool Settings window, set the Brush Shape option to Watercolor.

This one little change already does quite a bit of the blending for us!

We can further adjust the gradient effect by using the “Adjust Opacity” option of the Control Point tool. Select it from the options in the Tool Settings. 

Hover the control point tool over a point of the vector line and drag left to lower the opacity.

Or drag right to increase the opacity.

Adjust the opacity until you like the look of the gradient. I also lowered the overall opacity of this layer to 75% as well.

Conclusion

This is one of those projects that comes along where it’s very helpful to know the capabilities of Clip Studio Paint and to be able to think ‘outside the box’ and use each tool to its full advantage to get the right look but also keep any other important qualities for the project - such as being able to resize the image - intact!

For more information on CLIP Studio Paint, please visit https://www.clipstudio.net/en  or https://graphixly.com