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 love the look of a city at nighttime for a background, but such a thing can be extremely time consuming to draw! I saw this tip on Pinterest and thought that this week we would see if it works to make an easy cityscape at sunset.

In this article we will cover the following topics:

Painting the Sky

Creating the City

Finishing Touches

Let’s make another simple background!

Painting the Sunset Sky

I created a new canvas on Clip Studio Paint on my iPad, then chose a pale yellow-orange color to fill a raster layer in with for the base of the sky.

Next I used a pale lilac color and the soft airbrush to paint a slight gradient at just above the midway point of the canvas.

In the Decoration - Background Subtool group I selected the Cloud brush and used it, with a variety of white, pink, orange, and purple colors, to paint some clouds across the sky.

Next I decided I wanted just a little blur on the clouds, so I chose Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur and moved the slider until I liked the look. Then tap OK to finalize the blur.

Now we can make the cityscape!

Making A City

To do this next part we want a big square brush with a bit of color or opacity variation to it. I decided to use this chisel tip marker brush by CSP User Fablepaint because it fit the bill perfectly!

After downloading and installing the brushes I chose the “Chisel Felt Dry” brush and made a new raster layer above the sky layer. Fill this layer with a medium blue, then start making random marks with the marker brush in various shades of blue.

You’ll want to concentrate the lighter blues toward the top of the canvas and the darker ones toward the bottom to almost make a gradient. These are going to be our “buildings” so vary the height and width.

Next tap on Edit - Transform - Free Transform. Squish the top of your layer of blue boxes down to where you want your horizon to be. Take the bottom left and right corners of the layer and drag them out so the corners are off the canvas and make a trapezoid shape. This will give a bit of a “perspective” look to the layer.

Next time I will definitely remember that if I want to make any antennas sticking up off the tops of the buildings to do them after the previous step so that they don’t get distorted too!

Now let’s make another new Raster Layer over the city layer. Set the Blending Mode to Add (Glow). Then use a soft airbrush in various colors to make different size dots to mimic city lights. I chose yellow, white, red, and some blues for these to add to the “random city” look!

Finishing Touches

Now let’s add some finishing touches to our image. I made a new layer between the city layer and the sky and painted in some dark purple mountains out on the horizon.

Next add a layer in front of everything and add a silhouette of a character enjoying the view! You can add a rim light and other details to your character, or leave it as a flat black silhouette if you prefer.

And we’re done!

Conclusion

This definitely isn’t a solution when you want a very detailed cityscape, but for a quick background or for doodling I think it works very well!

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