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!

I’ve often said that I love just how customizable Clip Studio Paint’s brushes are. However, for a beginner the brush customization engine may be a bit overwhelming at first. What if you are just starting out but want to create a brush for a specific effect? It’s actually much easier than you might think, and that’s what we will explore this week! 

In this article we will cover the following topics:

Drawing and Registering a Custom Brush Tip

Creating a Custom Ribbon Brush

Let’s create a custom brush!

Drawing and Registering a Custom Brush Tip

The first thing we need to do is create the design for our brush tip. Before I got started I actually looked up “wind magic” in Google to get some ideas for what I wanted my magic to look like, then collected a couple of images I liked to refer from as I made my custom brush. 

I created a new canvas with 300dpi and also set the Default color expression to Gray. Remember to do this or you will be unable to change the color of your brush later!

Using the Lasso tool, I drew out a rough starting shape for my brush tip.

Fill the selection in with black. Then, using the Liquify and Fingertip tools, I added some more “tendrils” coming off the main shapes and tried to make them wispy. If you have references be sure that you are consulting them to get a shape that you like!

Once I like the overall shape, I used the blend tool and also the soft airbrush set to transparent to soften the shapes and add some translucent areas. 

Using the rectangle marquee tool, select a little bit of the top and bottom of the design, then click on Delete in the quick launch menu beneath the selection to clear these areas and clean up these edges. 

Now we want to copy our design and make it longer. To do this I had to make my canvas taller so there was room to copy the design.

Once I changed the size of my canvas I clicked the Scale/Rotate icon in the top toolbar to activate the control handles around my brush shape design. 

With the transformation handles active on the brush shape design, I first clicked on “Keep original image” in the Tool Property palette. Then click on the Flip Horizontal icon to make a copy of the brush shape design that is mirrored. 

Drag the new mirrored copy down to the bottom of the original design. Try to line these up as best as you can, but it doesn’t have to be perfect right now! 

Click on OK once the copied brush tip shape is in place. Now let’s zoom in to see the joint where our shapes overlapped. Mine isn’t too bad, but it needs a bit of editing. Using the Blend, Soft Eraser, and Fingertip tools, I smoothed out the colors and made the edges flow together better. 

Make any other edits that you want to the overall shape before proceeding.

Before proceeding to the next step, be sure of the following things:

Your brush shape is all on one layer and is NOT merged with any Paper layers.

Make sure that your brush shape layer is set to “Gray”. You can check this in the Layer Property window. If it is set to “Color” then you will not be able to change the color of your brush while using it. 

Once you’ve made sure of these two things, click on Edit - Register Material - Image.

In the Material Property window, type in a name for your brush shape. Make sure to click on the “Use for brush tip shape” checkbox. Select a save location and also enter some search tags so you can find your material in the next section. 

Now we are ready to start making our brush!

Creating a Custom Ribbon Brush

To start making our custom brush, we need to choose an existing subtool and make a copy of it. I selected the G-pen subtool because it will need to have the least amount of changes to the settings to make it work. Then click on the “Create copy of selected subtool” icon, shown in the red box below. 

Enter a name for your new subtool. You can also choose a tool icon and a background color for the icon if you’d like.

Now our new brush tool should be the selected tool. In the Tool Property window, click on the wrench icon in the lower right corner to open the sub tool details window.

In the Sub Tool Detail window, click on the Brush Tip category on the left menu, then click on the Material option under Tip Shape. 

The black box under the two Tip Shape options will have the message “Click here and add tip shape”. Click the message to open the Material Library options.

Find the brush shape we made in the previous section. You may need to type in the name in the search bar to find it more easily. Click the brush shape to select it, then click “OK”.

You should now see the preview of your brush in the material box and also at the top of the Sub Tool Detail window.

Next we’re going to turn on the Ribbon function for our brush. Click on the Stroke category in the left hand menu, then click on the “Ribbon” checkbox. You can also change the repeat method. I chose the “Random” repeat to add a little more organic feel to my completed brush. 

If you have a canvas open as you are doing this, you can test your current brush settings by using the brush on the canvas. I love doing this to make sure my brush is looking good!

Now let’s give our brush a “real world” test! I made a quick drawing to test this brush out on. I created a new layer above the drawing and then used the brush in a spiral pattern in white with an opacity of about 80%. Then I created another layer and used the brush again using a light blue color. 

Set the light blue layer to the Add (Glow) blending mode as well, then drop the opacity a little. I used 70%.

I then created another Add (Glow) layer and added a glow to the hand and some extra glow at a few points along the wind effect using white and the soft airbrush tool.

Conclusion

Using this same process, you can make so many awesome brushes! Try creating fire, or lightning, or even things such as clothing textures or a brush for drawing shoelaces! The possibilities are literally endless with just a simple process. 

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