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!

Last week we talked about how to create a simple background using Materials. But what if you want to create something with atmosphere and storytelling power? Say, a beautiful starry skyscape? Thankfully this is a very easy process, especially with Clip Studio Paint’s suite of powerful brushes.

In this article we will cover the following topics:

Painting the Sky

Adding Stars

Adjust Sky Color and Details

Putting a Character in Your Scene

Let’s start painting!

Painting The Sky

Start with a canvas of any size! I’m using a 10x8 inch canvas at 300dpi. Fill the canvas with a dark blue or dark purple color, but make sure that it’s not too dark as we will be adding darker shades later.

Using the Round Watercolor brush, add a darker shade to the top third of the canvas and a lighter, brighter shade to the bottom. I like using the Watercolor brush for this because it allows me to go over the same spot a few times and slowly build up the color instead of being full opacity in one pass.

Use the Blend tool to blend in the new shades to the middle of the sky. 

On a new layer, add a few streaks of a purple shade if your background is primarily blue, or a blue shade if you are using primarily purple. 

Blend this new layer out using the Blend tool, then lower the opacity so that it just adds a bit of color variation. This will be the base of our starry sky!

Adding Stars

Before we go adding more lights and darks to the sky, let’s add our stars. Create a new layer and select white as your active color. You can draw the stars in with your favorite pen tool, or the easiest way I’ve found is to select the Airbrush tool then the “Spray” subtool. 

Make a small patch of stars using your preferred method. Then click on the Scale/Rotate icon in the top bar above your Canvas window. This will bring up a bounding box around your patch of stars.

In the Tool Settings, make sure the “Keep Original Image” box is checked.

Move your patch of stars to the side to double it.

Continue this process until you have as many stars as you want! Make sure to adjust each new patch slightly, either by rotating them using the handle at the top of the bounding box or by flipping them horizontally and vertically to make them look like a big field of random stars. 

Set your star layer to “Add (Glow)” blending mode. Then duplicate your layer and transform it again by flipping it horizontally and repositioning it. Lower the opacity on one layer to make those stars look further away. 

You can also use a soft eraser to lightly go over any areas where you feel there are too many stars to fade them out and make it look a little more natural. Don’t go overboard with the stars or they will look unnatural!

Adjusting Sky Color and Details

Now that we have our stars put into our image we can add some more color and shading to the sky. I went back to my original layer that we started off on and, using the Round Watercolor brush again, added black to the upper edge and corners and an even brighter blue to the very bottom.

Blend the black and lighter color out, then you can add more purples and blues to the middle of the canvas. Blend these out as well. Keep adding dark and light areas until you like the overall look, but try to keep the darkest areas at the top edge so that it looks a bit more realistic.

Next I added another new layer, also set to the “Add (Glow)” blending mode. Select the Decoration tool, then in the “Effect” folder you should find a few brushes named “Sparkle”. Use these to add a few brighter stars in the sky. 

Now we can add a foreground if we want to! Make a new layer and draw the ground using black. Use the “Lock Transparent Pixels” icon in the Layer palette to keep the shape unchanged, then add a bit of blue or purple to the top edge of the ground silhouette.

In the Decoration tool under the Vegetation folder there is a default “Tree” brush. Use this on a new layer in black to add some trees to the scene as well. You can also add some shades of blue and black to the trees as well to make them not look like flat cardboard cutouts.

Putting a Character In Your Scene

You can leave your drawing just like this or you can add items or characters to it. I decided to add a character sitting on a log or rock to the right side of my illustration. 

You can do a flat silhouette or add some detail by adding some of the character’s base colors around the edge of the silhouette and to highlight some details like the strands of hair, edges of the arms and legs, etc. 

Add a new layer over the character layer and fill it with blue or purple. Set the layer to Multiply and lower the opacity. To make this layer only change the character layer, right click it and go to Layer Settings - Clip to Layer Below. This will make the colors on the edge of the character blend into the scene better. 

For extra highlights, create an “Add” layer and use a light color to put a bright blue or purple in just a few places to create some more eye-catching areas on the figure.

Adjust the position of the character and the scale of the trees if needed.

Add a few light white lines across the sky for some shooting stars and you’re done!

Conclusion

An exercise like this is great for when you need a warmup that is more than just sketching anatomy, but it also produces a very nice final product on its own as well, making it perfect for when you want to create but also don’t have the time or energy to do something very complex!

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