How To BLEND COLORS in Clip Studio Paint

So in today's video I want to show you how I blend colors. Quite a few of you have asked me how I do it so I thought it would be a cool idea to kind of jump into Clip Studio Paint and show you the two different techniques that I use when I'm blending colors. So the first technique is going to be manual. So we're going to do everything manually by hand and the second technique is going to involve my custom made brushes for Clip Studio Paint that'll enable you to smoothly blend colors into each other. It's going to be super easy, fun, and fast. So I'm going to start with the first technique which is only going to involve a standard painting brush and it's super simple to be honest. And I think it's also very important that you understand the basic idea behind this process because it's very important for when you're painting. And once I'm done with that technique I'm going to jump into the second one in which I'll show you my different blending brushes and how I use them and why I use them over the first technique. So I would say without further ado let's just jump right into this video and I'll show you the two different techniques. So what you see on the screen is Clip Studio Paint and I prepared a few color swatches that I'm going to use to demonstrate the different blending methods. So the first one I'm going to use to show you the manual method and the others I'm going to use to demonstrate you my custom brushes. The first thing that we want to do is we're going to go over to our brushes and just pick any kind of standard painting brush. So I'm just going to use a standard Hardiron brush to blend these colors into each other. So what we do to start this off is you want to color pick one of the two colors that you want to blend. And you do that by clicking and holding Alt on your keyboard. So you hold Alt and you select the color one of the two colors that you want to blend into each other. So in this case I'm going to select orange and once I have that selected I let go of Alt and now I paint into the blue side with the just selected orange. So what you see here what is happening is I'm creating a mid-tone. A color that is half blue and half orange. And this is exactly what we want. And so the next step is to select the newly created mid-tone and then we want to paint into the orange side. So now we're just doing exactly the opposite. Painting into the orange creating yet another mid-tone. And so this is a back and forth process. We keep repeating this until we have a nice and smooth color transition. So next what I'm going to do is I'm going to select the newly created mid-tone in the orange side and I'm just going to paint back into the blue side. And you can see how we're already creating a gradient. We're already blending the two colors into each other making a smooth transition between the two. And so we keep repeating this process until we are happy with the final result. So you can go on like this for hours if you wanted to but usually it only takes a couple of seconds of going back and forth until you have a nice gradient and your colors are nicely blended. And you can see how quick this was and how easily I was able to pull this off. And so you really need to understand this concept for when you're painting because you're going to be blending a lot. And so this was the first method. This is the manual method. And I just wanted to quickly show it to you because I believe it's like super important to know how it works. And next up I want to show you my custom brushes that you can download in my shop, in my Gumroad shop. They're not really expensive. They're cheaper than a burger at McDonald's. But they create like super nice effects and textures and they're way easier to use because you don't have to color pick. All you have to do is basically wiggle the pen between the two colors and the rest is done automatically. So it's super cool, easy to use and fast. And so I'm just going to select one of my blending brushes here. So the first one is called Smudgy. I'm just going to select that one and I'm going to show you how it works. So remember how with the first method I had to color pick one of the two colors then paint into the other and then repeat the process? With the custom brushes that I created, you don't have to do that. All you have to do is you just paint from side to side. So you just wiggle your pen around and the rest is done by itself. So just watch. So you can see how easy it is for me to blend the colors. It really doesn't take up a whole lot of time and it's so fun to use. I also think that it looks way more interesting than the first method because there's some texture to it. It kind of looks like traditional blending as if I was painting with real paints. Because there are imperfections and there's texture, it just makes it more interesting and more exciting to look at. And that's why I like to use custom brushes. It's not because I can't do it manually. It's just because I think when using custom brushes, they kind of add an effect to your painting that is very hard to achieve manually. So this is one of the brushes that I have in my set of blending brushes. There are a total of 10 brushes in this set. I'm super proud of them and they're really cool. I like to use them all the time. And this is basically how I blend stuff in my paintings. So I'm going to show you a few more different brushes out of this set, the ones that I like the most. And hopefully you kind of get inspired to maybe create your own brushes or to purchase the ones that I have to offer or maybe even download somebody else's brushes. But just give them a try and see how they can really have an impact on the look of your art and they can really make it more interesting. So I'm going to go over to the next color swatch and I'm just going to select the next blending brush and I'm going to show you how or what else I have in my set. So the next one is called Frost. And this one is really nice. I like to use this when I'm blending skin, for example, because it adds a really soft texture to it and you can really make skin look believable with this blending brush alone. So let me just demonstrate to you how this brush looks. So again, I'm just wiggling between the two colors and can you see how it's like creating these dots between the two colors? Maybe if I zoom in, you can see how it has this texture to it. And if you were going to blend skin like this, it could really make it look really realistic. And it didn't take me a whole lot of time. It maybe took me like five seconds to create this effect. And I just think that's amazing. And that's to me, that's the big advantage of digital painting over traditional paints. It's just that you have like almost limitless options or filters to create many different effects. So whatever you have in mind, if you're smart about it, you probably are able to to kind of achieve or to create that effect that you have in mind. So anyway, so moving on, I'm going to show you the next blending brush called Smudgeaholic. And this one is very similar to the first blending brush that I showed you. But to me, it looks a little bit more traditional. It looks more real, kind of like as if you were blending oil paints. That's how it looks to me. So it's a really strong blending brush. And you can see how it's kind of smearing the color around. And I just like this effect. To me, it's super cool. And it gives you this painterly look. And so a big problem that I have with with digital painting is that many times it just looks too clean. It's too perfect and too soft. And that's why I like to use or that's I like to purposely create imperfections because whenever something looks too clean or too good, it's missing character. And so I like to add back that character by introducing texture and texture is like super important. And it plays a big part in the look of my art. So whenever I have a chance to to create texture in one of my illustrations, then I always do. It's just because I love texture so much. And if you know how to pull it off correctly, you can really make your images pop. So I want to show you another brush. The next brush is called Butter Knife. And this one is a very sharp brush. It's as if you were using a knife on a canvas and you can really push colors around or kind of cut between two colors and create really cool effects. So I'm basically just pulling the color from one side to the other and back. And you can see how it's creating this this really sharp effect. And it's as if you were using a knife on a canvas. So this has a really traditional painterly feel. And the next brush is called the squeegee. It's very similar, but it's just a flat version of it. You can't really cut with it because it's following the direction of your pen. So all of these brushes have a different purpose and I use them for different painting situations. So I wouldn't use one single brush of these for a complete painting. I would basically mix it up. So for example, when I'm blending skin, I would use one of these brushes. And when I'm painting hair, I would use another brush. And so by mixing all of these brushes, you're creating many different effects and you're making your art even more interesting and exciting. So the next one is called Confetti. It's similar to the one that I showed you up here, the frost brush, but it's larger. So let me just show you what I mean. So it has these large bubbles. And for example, if you were to if you were to paint clouds, then this would be a really nice brush to use for it because you can really quickly paint the texture of clouds with a brush like this. And obviously, you could do it manually. So you could go in there and really do it by hand, one step at a time. But why not do it like this if it saves you time and struggle? So especially if you're if you're working on pieces for a client and you're on a deadline, you don't want to waste time creating things that you could create much quicker otherwise. So painting clouds could take me hours, like literally hours. But by using a brush like this, I could paint a cloud in like five minutes. So that's why I have these tools. These are like tools. They do not create my art, but these tools help me in being more efficient than I would be without them. So these are the tools that I use and they help me create the type of art that I want to create. So the next brush is called Blend Master Flash. And some of you may know this brush already from one of my older sets. And this is basically a very simple blending brush. It doesn't have any effect to it. It's just a smooth brush to just get a really quick blended effect. So basically, you're just creating a smooth gradient and it just works very easy. That's why I have it in my set. And I use it a lot of times when I need to soften up a certain area. But you do need to be careful when using this brush because if you use it too much, your image will look too soft and kind of airbrushy and it's going to look a little bit fake. So be careful with this brush, but whenever you need to soften something up, so if there's a really strong highlight, then sometimes you want to soften it up. And that's when I use a brush like this. So basically, I just wiggle between the two colors again and it's just creating a very smooth transition between the two colors in like two seconds. And so the last one I want to show you is called H2O. And this one has an effect as if you were adding water to your paint to make it more fluid. I use this from time to time. I don't use it too often, but sometimes when I want to create like a really wet look or I want to mix colors that are kind of hard to mix, then I use this brush because it kind of blends them very strongly into each other. So here we go. So it kind of looks like I'm adding water to my paint to make it more wet. And this is the effect. So if we zoom out and we look at the different effects that we can achieve and you see that our options are almost limitless. So the first one was the manual method. To me, it looks a little bit boring because there's not much going on, but it definitely has its purposes. So sometimes I just don't want to like grab one of my smudging brushes and I just do it manually real quick. That's when you would want to use a method like this. But for any other type of situation, I would use one of my custom brushes because they give me a much more interesting look. They kind of add that little bit of extra that I'm always looking for because I want to break up that perfection that I get when I'm painting digitally. And so I need to introduce texture to kind of add life to my paintings. And that's why I'm using custom brushes. And so you can really see the variety of different looks that we can get just by using a different brush. And so, yeah, I guess this kind of wraps up today's tutorial. It was a rather quick tutorial, but I just wanted to demonstrate to you how I would blend colors and how I use my custom brushes to blend the colors. So hopefully you guys kind of learned something from this video. I'm always trying to make it as easy as possible for anybody to pick it up. And if you're interested in trying out some of my brushes, then visit my Gumbo shop. The link is posted in the description below this video. And if you like this video, then please give it a thumbs up. If you have any questions or you just want to chat, then leave a comment below. If you haven't subscribed to my channel, then please hit the subscribe button. And as always, guys, I love you with all my heart and soul. Peace.