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!

Have you ever wanted to make an item look shiny and magical, like it’s made of Mother of Pearl or from an iridescent rainbow fabric? It may seem like a daunting task, but it’s actually quite easy with just a bit of setup, a few Blending Modes, and a little bit of finishing!

In this article we will cover the following topics:

Getting Set Up

Adjusting and Finishing Touches

Let’s get colorful!

Getting Set Up

So obviously first we need something to turn iridescent! This can be clothes, an object, or really anything you want. I’ve decided to go with a bow. Before moving on to colors, you’ll want to shade your object using shades of gray. I put down a light base color, then did the gray shading on another layer. Once I had the shading done, I made a copy of the base color and shading layers and merged them together so that my original layers were untouched. Duplicate this merged layer and turn off visibility on the copy. We’ll be saving the copy for later in case we want to make the shading more intense!

Next make a new raster layer over top of the shading layer. Using a rainbow of colors and a soft brush, add colors as you see fit! In the Color Set palette in Clip Studio Paint, you can change the dropdown menu to different sets of colors. I used the “Light Tone” set for the colors below, but there are also more and less saturated palettes in the color sets if you prefer those!

To add the colors I used the Soft airbrush tool set to 50% Opacity.

Make sure to take your time with this step. I went over each area a few times until I could no longer see the gray shading underneath. If you’ve lowered the opacity on your brush tool you can blend the colors a bit by using softer pressure and making light passes over other colors.

Now let’s make the color stick to the space inside our object. Right-click on the Colors layer and go to Layer Settings - Clip to Layer Below. If this layer is over the merged shading layer (which it should be!) then your colors will only show in the area where the layer beneath has pixels filled in.

And as you can see, we now have a colorful, but pretty flat and lifeless, iridescent bow! In the next section we are going to use layer modes, gradient maps, and filters to do a few easy final touches.

Adjusting and Finishing Touches

The first step to finishing up our coloring job is to change the Colors layer’s blending mode. The mode you use is really up to your preferences and the look you’re going for. I went with the Screen mode at 100% Opacity, but you may like the Add, Add (Glow), Overlay, or even Darken modes! Try out some different Blending Modes and see which one looks best to you.

Once I set the blending mode, I realized I didn’t like the saturation of my colors. To fix this, go to Layer - Tonal Correction - Hue/Saturation/Luminosity and adjust the Saturation.

Also once I was looking at my colors over the grayscale shading I realized that the colors were getting kind of “muddy” because of the gray shading and white base of the bow! But that’s okay because that’s an easy fix. I selected the Merged Bow layer and then clicked on Layer - New Correction Layer - Gradient Map.

Gradient Maps are really cool because you can assign colors in a gradient to tones in a grayscale image, and since we shaded the object in grays we can use a gradient map to change up the overall colors and mood of our drawing! I went through a few different gradients for my bow’s base layer and eventually chose the “Blue Sky” gradient to punch up the cool colors in the ribbon.

Now I want to bring back some of the shading and dimension that I established in the initial stages of this image. This is where the copy of the merged layer that we made comes in! I dragged and dropped this layer over top of the colors and set the layer to the Multiply blending mode and turned down the opacity as well.

Of course since this merged copy is also shades of gray, it’s making the iridescent colors a bit muddy again. So I applied another Gradient Map to this layer as well, but used the “Sunset (Purple)” gradient this time because I liked the way it looked. 

Now let’s add some highlights! I airbrushed some white very lightly in a few areas on the colors layer, then made a new layer above everything and added white highlights with a pen tool. Use the Blur tool to soften some of the edges of the white highlights.

For a final touch, I selected the line art layer and used the “Lock Transparent Pixels” icon in the Layer palette to make sure that the black lines were locked. Then you can use either a gradient tool or airbrush to make a subtle gradient in the line art. I went with a very dark pink in the top left to a very dark purple in the bottom right. If you want to, you can paint the lines instead with darker versions of the colors nearby.

And you’re done!

Conclusion

And that’s it! With this information you can make all sorts of special effects just by changing the colors of iridescence and the base color of the object. Have fun experimenting with different color schemes to make all your shiny material dreams come true!

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