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 need a complex background to tell a story or set a mood, but sometimes you just don’t want to have an empty white space around the art that you spent a lot of time creating! We’re going to use background materials, some blending modes, and a couple more simple techniques to make an interesting looking background that shows off our character art with just a few clicks!

In this article we will cover the following topics:

Layering Materials to Create a Background

Two Methods for Adding an Outline around a Character

Adding Finishing Touches

Let’s make a simple but awesome looking background to finish off our illustration!

Layering Materials To Create a Background

First let’s find some images in the Material Library that we want to use! By default the Material Library is on the right side of the CSP User Interface. I’m going to use materials in the Color Pattern - Background folder. If you have not downloaded any materials, only the default ones will show in your Material Library.

When you find an image you like, click on it to select it.

Drag and drop the image you want to use onto your canvas from the Material Library. 

If the Material has not been downloaded, you will see the following message. You must be connected to the internet to download the material. Click on Yes to continue.

Once the download is finished you may need to drag-and-drop the downloaded material to the canvas again. If you are using one of the default Background images it will paste in at the bottom of the Layer stack in the layer palette.

I chose three images I liked from the Material Library and added them all to my image in one folder marked “Background”. It doesn’t matter what color these images are because we’re going to adjust the color in a few steps, so don’t pay attention to the colors as much as the texture and areas of light and dark in the image. 

Once you’ve chosen a few images to use, change the Blending Mode of all but the bottom layer in the stack. 

Remember to change the order of the layers to see what you like best! Sometimes the same images will look very different depending on which Blending Mode is on top of which. 

I knew I wanted to keep this background fairly light, so I stayed away from blending modes like Multiply, Darken, and Linear Burn. Instead I opted for modes like Add (Glow), Screen, Lighten, and Overlay. I played with all of these modes until I came up with a combination I liked, then also adjusted the opacity of the top two layers as well.

You can also rotate a layer if you’d like simply by selecting it, then zooming out if needed to find the white circle handle on the bounding box. Hovering over this and dragging left or right will rotate the image.

Now let’s adjust the color of the background! The way we’re going to do this will even make it possible to change our mind about the color later and change it again if we wish. 

Click on Layer - New Correction Layer - Hue/Saturation/Luminosity.

Adjust the sliders in the Hue/Saturation/Luminosity settings to change the color of the background. I chose green initially, but as you’ll see in the “Adding Finishing Touches” section, we can actually change our mind entirely about the color later when we use an Adjustment Layer! 

Click OK when you have a color you think you’ll like.

Two Methods For Adding An Outline Around A Character

One way to make an illustration look a bit more polished even without spending a ton of time on a background is to add an outline around your character. We’re going to cover two ways of doing this in this section, but to start either method you will need to create a layer with all your character art flattened on it. To do this, I like to turn off any background layers and then go to Layer - Merge Visible to New Layer. This creates a flattened copy of the visible layers without destroying the original layers.

Drag the flattened copy layer down below the character art but above the background layers. 

Our first method is to apply a Border effect to the layer. With the flattened copy layer selected, open the Layer Properties palette. Under “Effect” click on the Border effect icon. Use the “Thickness of Edges” slider to change how thick the border is. Note that if your image is large you may need to use the second method we’re going to cover in a moment to make a thicker outline because the slider maxes out at 10.0 with Border Effect. 

You can change the color of the outline by clicking on the Edge Color box and selecting a new color using the color picker. 

The advantage of creating the border this way is that you can change the thickness and color at any point just by going back to the layer and changing these settings.

Our second method requires a few more steps but you can make a much thicker outline and you can also do special effects like apply a gradient or layer mask, which can’t be done when using the Border Effect setting. The downside though is that you can’t edit this outline with just a few button presses.

We’re going to start off on the flattened copy of the character art that we made at the beginning of this section. Right-click on the layer in the Layer palette window, then go to Selection From Layer - Create Selection.

The contents of your layer will now be surrounded by a selection area. This is a simple two-click way to select the entirety of your character art. 

In the quick launch bar below the selection, click on the “Expand Selected Area” icon.

Change the expansion width. I recommend starting with a small number at first. You can always expand the selection again and make it wider if you need to before the next step!

An expansion of 1.00 only made a tiny border on my image because of the image resolution, as you can see below! I wanted a thicker outline so I clicked the Expand Selection icon again and used 3.00 a few times until the outline was the size I wanted it to be.

Select the color you want your outline to be, then click the paint bucket icon in the quick launch bar under the selection to fill the selection with color.

Adding Finishing Touches

Now let’s add some finishing touches! I decided I didn’t like the green background, but thankfully we set up an adjustment layer earlier that makes it very easy to change the color! Double click on the Hue/Saturation/Adjustment layer’s thumbnail in the Layer palette to bring the settings up again. 

Adjust the sliders until you like the new color. I decided to go with purple instead of green.

As a final touch to bring the eye more to the character, create a new layer over the other background elements. Use the Ellipse marquee tool to create a circular selection centered on the focal point (in my case, the character’s face). Use the quick launch bar under the selection to invert the selection so that the outside of the canvas is selected with a circle deselected in the middle. Then I filled this selection with a dot pattern (just a flat color is fine as well!). Deselect the area, then use a soft eraser to soften the edges. Adjust the opacity to make the effect more subtle, creating darker corners and a lighter area around the focal point.

Conclusion

Backgrounds can tie a piece together and make it look more finished and lead the viewer’s eye to the focal point, but they don’t need to be complicated. With materials, some blending modes, an adjustment layer, and a simple outline, you can tie together an illustration and make it look ten times better than just leaving the background white!

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