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 never hidden my struggles with really grasping how to apply color theory to my art. I love coloring but I also know that sometimes my color choices are just not great. So when I stumbled on this tip I actually didn’t think I’d be writing about it but I wanted to try it out to see if it would help me pick colors that go together better. And I was honestly so pleased with the results that I wanted to share that with all of you! So if you hate your color choices and struggle to make a nice, cohesive palette where the colors don’t look strange, come along with me and try this simple method out!

In this article we will cover the following topics:

Two Ways to Create Harmonious Palettes

Color Palette Examples

Let’s do some coloring!

Two Ways to Create Harmonious Palettes

I’ve always liked this drawing of one of my original characters, but I’ve never finished coloring it because, frankly, I just don’t like the colors. The character was designed to be bright and energetic, hence the bright green hair, but something has just always seemed off about the color palette and I’ve never been able to really make it ‘work’. So let’s try to fix it today!

First, I’m going to make a new layer in my illustration file and color pick the palette using the Eyedropper tool. With a hard pen tool, I put a line of each color at the top corner of my drawing. (If you have white in your design, make sure you also grab the white as well! I forgot to do this for these first three examples and regretted it)

Then change the pen tool’s opacity to 50% and use a new color to draw over the palette colors. I made three vertical lines over my palette, each one a different color. I used lavender, blue, and golden yellow.

(Note that with this method I found the colors I ended up with were much more intense. You can always adjust the opacity to something more to your personal preference if you like this method but want a more subtle color.)

The other method I tested using the same starting process of making a mark of each color in my character’s palette. Then I set my pen tool to the Multiply blending mode and 25% opacity. To see the tool’s blending mode, you may need to open the Advanced Tool Settings by clicking the wrench icon in the lower right of the Tool Settings window, then clicking on Ink and choosing the blending mode from the drop down menu. You can have this setting show in the Tool Property menu instead by clicking the box to the left of the Blending Mode option to turn it into an eye icon. Now you won’t have to open the Advanced Tool Settings to change the tool’s blending mode!

Now choose a color you want to use to harmonize your palette and color over the base palette with it. I chose four colors for this - purple, blue, yellow, and orange.

Now you can use the eyedropper tool to choose the colors from the intersections of the lines to get the adjusted color.

Color Palette Examples

Let’s look at some color palettes made with the two methods outlined above! 

The colors below were made with a brush at 50% Opacity and lavender as an adjustment color. 

The colors below were made with a brush at 50% Opacity and blue as an adjustment color. 

The colors below were made with a brush at 50% Opacity and yellow as an adjustment color. 

Now let’s look at color palettes made with the 25% Opacity Multiple Blending Mode method. The palette below was created using this method and purple as the adjustment color.

Below is the 25% Opacity and Multiply Blending Mode method with blue as the adjustment color.

Our next example is 25% Opacity and Multiply Blending Mode method with yellow as the adjustment color.

And finally we have an example with orange as the adjustment color. As you can see, the 25% Opacity and Multiply Blending Mode method creates much more subtly tinted colors.

The examples below are the above color palettes with the exact same shading and highlighting colors (Shadow layers are set to Multiply at 50% opacity with dark blue, highlight layer is set to Screen at 50% opacity with light yellow.)

Which one is your favorite?

Conclusion

This is definitely a trick I will be keeping ‘in my back pocket’ for any colored illustrations I do in the future, especially for characters who have crazy color palettes that I’ve never been able to harmonize! 

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