Is black line art getting you down? Do you want to see how different line colors change your art? Are you just bored and want to play with some stuff in Clip Studio Paint? Great! This is the place for you! Read on for FIVE ways to recolor your line art in CSP!
Pro Tip: Keep your line art on a separate layer (or layers) until you’re ready to merge everything together.
Clip a New Layer to Your Line Art
Create a new layer above your line art layer. Clip that layer to the line art layer by clicking the icon with a dotted square on top of a solid square.
Now anything you do on the new layer will only show up where your lines are, kind of like a layer mask. You can turn clipping on and off by clicking the icon again or hide the layer itself. Clipping is super useful since you won’t be editing the line art layer directly and you can experiment away without messing up the bones of your art. It also gives you the freedom to use multiple colors, gradients, tools, and effects.
Lock Transparent Pixels
To recolor your line art this way, it needs to be a raster layer. Select the line art layer, then click the lock with the little squares behind it.
This is the quick and dirty way I recolor all kinds of things, BUT I always (try to remember to) duplicate the layer I’m working with because this changes the existing art. This is the equivalent of alpha locking in Procreate, so all it’s doing is preventing you from making marks in the blank space.
Change the Layer Color
If all you need is to quickly switch the color of your line art to something else, this is your best bet. Select your line art layer, then click on the drop down with the two color squares. Select the color you want your lines to be and it will change.
You can change the color expression of any layer, but this works especially well for anything you where need to make single color changes. You can also toggle it on and off by clicking the icon, so you aren’t stuck with it if you don’t like it later.
Convert to Drawing Color
Truth time! When I first saw this option lurking in the Edit menu, I thought it was supposed to make my line art match my color layer. You know, convert the lines to the color of my drawing. Then of course I couldn’t understand why it didn’t work! It’s probably because that’s not what this Clip Studio Paint feature does. Convert to Drawing Color changes your layer to the color that you are drawing with.
So for this method, select your layer, then select the color you want. Go to the Edit menu and click on “Convert to Drawing Color” and your line art will change to the color you picked.
You’ll probably want to duplicate your layer before playing with this feature because it does make changes to your work and you can’t turn it on and off.
Use an Auto Action to Recolor Line Art
Finally there’s auto actions. This is a set of predefined steps that you can run automatically to save time. If you find yourself making the same edits to your work every time, an auto action will probably help. If you don’t feel like making your own, there are lots of free ones available for download from Clip Studio Assets. Auto actions for changing the color of your line art are no exception!
There are a bunch for free that you can play around with and some work better than others. Seeing how other users build their auto actions is also a good way to learn new things about CSP!
Pro tip: Lots of CSP assets are labelled in foreign languages. Label them as soon as they’re downloaded so you know what they are later!
Now that you can change the color of your line art, what should we learn next? Drop a comment below and tell me what CSP tutorials you want to see next!
Thanks for reading! If videos are more your style, this info is on my TikTok and YouTube pages!