To begin, create a new document: A4 canvas with width 210mm × height 297mm, a resolution of 350, and a 50% gray paper. Then add your illustration or model to the canvas. I am going to use a 3D model in the pose of a football player about to kick. Now let's add a background with texture below the illustration or model.
For that you can take a photo of an old wall, bricks or any texture that you like. Drag the image to the canvas or open it in Clip Studio and place it below the model. Also you can duplicate the texture image and place it at the top above the model and change the blending mode to Overlay and decrease the opacity to around 20-40.
Now, if you want to add a paper texture to the entire canvas you can also do that. Clip Studio Paint has a lot of texture materials. You can find them in Window > Material > Monochromatic pattern. Just drag the material to the canvas to apply the texture and it will appear at the top of all the layers.
I have prepared a scanned paper texture (you can also take a photo) so we are going to see how to add the texture from an image.
Now let's work more on the texture of the wall. In addition you can use Masks to hide some areas. Clip Studio Paint has many type of brushes classified inside the Tool palette. Every tool can contain groups of sub tools. Watercolor, Airbrush & Effects. I really recommend you to explore all these brushes and its textures in a new document, see which of them can be helpful for your work.
Now that you have explored the sub tools you can duplicate and modify the brushes you like. Also you can group them in your own Personal Brush Tool. Duplicate the brush you would like to modify. Use the icon to duplicate or right-click over the brush. You can select the brushes you would like to modify and group them in your new tool (drag and drop one by one over the tool). You can also see the tip of the brush in the Sub Tool Palette. Click over the icon or press Alt+T if you are using my brushes workspace. Now that you have explored the digital brushes and the Brush tips inside Clip Studio Paint. You can use a markers, chalk, real brush, home-made ink, anything you like. Try to analyze the brush tip shapes of the brushes you selected before. You can draw points, lines, expressive lines, etc. You can also use paper with texture.
Try to scan the brushes with a resolution of 300-600 dpi. The fast and easiest way to create your own textures brushes in Clip Studio is to change the tip brush to an existing brush. Set the color of your tip to black or dark gray. Adjust the contrast with Correction layers or Edit > Tonal Correction. Remove the white Edit > Convert brightness to opacity. Now we need to register the brush image as a material in Clip Studio Paint. You can create a Material folder to group the materials that you create.
Make a selection around the image you want to register as material and make sure the layer Expression Color is gray. You can also choose Monochrome but it will make the borders harder. If you register the material with Expression Color in Color it will register also the color you are using so you are not going to be able to change the color later. With the selection active Edit > Register Material > Image. Select the folder where you want to save the material. And it is very important to check Use for brush tip shape to use the material in brushes. Open the Sub Tool Detail Palette. Click on the icon or press Alt+T if you are using my brushes workspace. Select Brush tip and click over the current material to replace it with the one we have created. And that's it, you have created your own hand-drawn brush material.
It is time to use the brushes to add more texture. You can make the 3D model visible again. Let's draw the shadows and lines from the 3D model. Also if you Rasterize the 3D model as an image in PRO you can use Outline Selection and Extract Lines & Binarization from the same article above. Here is mine.
Now let's make some adjustments to start adding texture with the brushes. You can hide the top layers: Correction Layers, Gradients, Textures, etc. Now you can use Blending modes to mix the layers colors of skin and shadows. I am using a Multiply layer for the general skin color with the opacity around 60-80. Use the modified Blend Brush to add some textures. You can blend all the shadows areas with the brush texture. And then you can continue blending other areas. In a separate vector layer select the Outline around the model or create one and place it below. Create a new layer below. I am going to use the Sand cloud Brush to separate the model from the background with a light almost white color.
You can also use the other modified brushes in your artwork. In the first step we saw that you can add texture to the entire canvas from Clip Studio Paint materials. Make a selection (Press M) and from Window > Material > Monochromatic pattern drag the material you would like to use. You will notice that a mask was created with the texture in the Layer palette. You can take the photos with any camera or search/buy images online in your browser. You can use the Selection tool (shortcut M) Ellipse for the ball and Lasso for the water. You can also use the icons to adjust the selection in the photo. I am going to use a mask to hide the areas I don't need and then I can start combining the photos. Change and try different Blending modes. For this artwork I am going to use Hard light. In a new layer I have painted with the modified Flame brush (now INK) around the leg to add texture and movement to the artwork. Then I changed the Blending Mode to Color Dodge and Add (Glow). You can also add more layers and try different Blending modes like Darken, Multiply, etc. Finally, I added the image of the water as we saw above. I really recommend you to explore all the Blending Modes every time.
Place the image and paint with a texture brush and change the blending mode. You can create a New Raster Layer and change the blending mode to Overlay. If you paint with black it will make that area darker and if you paint white it will make that area lighter. Feel free to use as many brushes as necessary. With the Text tool I wrote Street Football in all caps and also translated to Spanish Fútbol de calle. Create a Mask for the text and with any texture brush you can start painting with transparency to hide areas of the text and add texture. If you need to reveal or show a specific area just paint with any color with the mask selected. Duplicate the text layer and place it below. Change the Blending Mode to Multiply and move it in order to look like the text shadow. Since the Text layer is not rasterized you can change the text. The mask will keep the texture created before, just make sure the new text is about the same length. Once we have finish combining brushes, photos, materials, etc. You can reveal the textures we hide in the first step. Place them at the top and if you like add more Gradient maps, Correction Layers and try different values, Blending Modes or decrease the Opacity in the Layer palette. This is my final artwork with a mask around the border painted with the hand-drawn brushes.
Thanks for following this tutorial! I hope you have found some useful tips here. You may also explore textures from Clip Studio Assets. Drag and drop your texture onto the canvas. It will appear as the top layer. Right click the layer and click Rasterize. Add a new layer and clip it to the texture layer. Set the texture layer to multiply. To achieve a traditional look to digital art, layer a paper/canvas looking texture over the image. Layer a texture layer over the character, one with lots of spots to mimic pores. Fill the layer clipped to the texture layer with your skin color to blend the texture. Erase texture layer until it is only on the skin. In some comic books they add a screentone or texture to the shading to make it stand out more. In this case, clip the texture layer to your shading layer. The texture I used was wood. Pick a texture that resembles fabric/threading. Fill the layer clipped to the texture layer with whatever color the characters clothes are. My favorite way to use textures is to use them for simple backgrounds. Pick any texture you want and scale it up so you can see larger lines or spots. Get creative! Color the layer clipped to the texture layer the same color as your background. Drag both layers behind the character. Thank you for reading this tutorial.
Images and textures can be added and tested in different ways to achieve a more tactile, traditional feel in digital art. The key is experimenting with texture placement, blending modes, opacity, and brush tips to integrate textures with lighting and shadows in a cohesive composition.
In summary, the process involves creating an A4 canvas, importing textures, using Monochromatic patterns, registering custom materials, and applying textures via brushes and blending modes to enhance depth and realism in Clip Studio Paint.