Quick answer: To make brushes in Clip Studio Paint, duplicate an existing brush from the Sub Tool palette (or create a new custom sub tool), open the Sub Tool Detail palette with the wrench icon, and adjust the brush tip, ink, stroke, texture and pressure settings. For a fully custom shape, draw a black mark on a white canvas, register it with Edit > Register Material > Image, tick “Use for brush tip shape,” then load that material as the tip of your new brush.
Learning how to make brushes in Clip Studio is less about memorizing menus and more about knowing which handful of settings actually change the mark. Clip Studio Paint gives you dozens of sliders per brush, but most custom brushes come down to five decisions: the tip shape, how far apart the stamps sit, what pressure controls, whether there is a paper grain, and how paint mixes on the canvas.
This guide walks through the full process in order, from making a safe copy of a stock brush to designing your own tip image, adding texture, building a dual brush and exporting the finished tool as a file you can back up or share. If you would rather start from proven presets and modify them, our guide to Clip Studio Paint brushes worth downloading is a good place to find a base.
How Clip Studio Paint Organizes Brushes
Before you change anything, it helps to know where brushes live. Clip Studio does not call them “brushes” in the menus. It calls them sub tools, and they sit inside a three-level structure:
- Tool – the icons in the Tool palette on the far left, such as Pen, Pencil, Brush, Airbrush and Decoration.
- Sub tool group – the tabs at the top of the Sub Tool palette, for example Watercolor, Oil paint or Thick paint under the Brush tool.
- Sub tool – the individual brushes listed in that group.
Every sub tool has two panels attached to it. The Tool Property palette shows a short list of the most-used settings. The Sub Tool Detail palette, opened with the small wrench icon at the bottom of Tool Property, shows every setting the brush engine offers. Almost all brush making happens in Sub Tool Detail.
Settings categories you will use most
| Category in Sub Tool Detail | What it controls | Typical custom use |
|---|---|---|
| Brush size | Size and what drives size (pressure, tilt, velocity) | Tapered ink lines, pressure-sized texture brushes |
| Ink | Opacity, blending mode, color mixing | Glazing brushes, multiply shading brushes |
| Brush tip | Circle or material tip, hardness, thickness, direction | Flat brushes, leaf stamps, chalk shapes |
| Spray | Scatters many particles around the stroke | Foliage, snow, splatter |
| Stroke | Gap between stamps, ribbon mode, repeat order | Smooth versus beaded strokes, pattern brushes |
| Texture | Paper grain applied inside the stroke | Pencil, charcoal, dry media |
| Watercolor edge | Darker edges around a stroke | Wet watercolor looks |
| Starting and ending | Taper at the start and end of a line | Comic inking, hair strands |
| Correction | Stabilization and post-correction | Clean line art |
| Dual brush | A second tip that masks the first | Broken, organic, dry-brush strokes |
If a category is missing from your list, click the small icon next to a setting in Sub Tool Detail and switch on “Show in Tool Property,” or check that you are viewing the full detail palette rather than Tool Property.
Step-by-Step: How to Make Brushes in Clip Studio
The safest workflow is to start from a brush that already behaves close to what you want. Building from a completely blank sub tool is possible, but it means configuring every category yourself.
Step 1: Pick a starting brush and duplicate it
- Select the tool and group that is closest to your goal. For a textured painting brush, the Brush tool’s Thick paint or Oil paint group is a good base. For an ink brush, use the Pen tool.
- Right-click the sub tool you want to copy and choose Duplicate sub tool.
- Give the copy a clear name, such as “Dry gouache flat” or “Inking taper 02,” and choose an icon and background color so you can spot it later.
Duplicating protects the original. If your settings go wrong, the stock brush is still there. If you prefer a blank slate, open the Sub Tool palette menu and choose Create custom sub tool, then pick the output process (Pen/Brush, Eraser, Blend and so on) and the input process. For a standard painting brush, choose the brush output with pen input.
Step 2: Decide the output behavior
Open Sub Tool Detail and look at the Ink category first, because it decides what the brush actually does to pixels.
- Opacity sets the maximum strength of each stroke.
- Blending mode works like layer blend modes but at stroke level. Multiply is handy for shading brushes; Normal suits most painting.
- Combine mode controls how overlapping stamps within one stroke add up. Darken or Normal changes whether a stroke builds up opacity where it overlaps itself.
- Color mixing, when enabled, lets the brush pick up underlying color. “Running color” and “Amount of paint” and “Density of paint” decide how much the stroke smears versus deposits fresh color.
A useful starting point for a blending paint brush is Amount of paint around 50 to 70, Density of paint around 60 to 80 and Color stretch low. Lower amounts make the brush smear more; higher amounts make it cover more. Adjust in small steps and test on a gradient.
Step 3: Set brush size and pressure
In Brush size, click the graph icon beside the size slider to open dynamics. Pen pressure is the most common driver. The pressure curve under File > Adjust pen pressure detection level sets your global feel; the curve inside each brush adjusts how that brush responds.
- For crisp ink, set a minimum size around 10 to 30 percent so light touches still make a thin line.
- For texture and stipple brushes, map opacity to pressure instead of size so the shape stays consistent.
- Tilt and velocity are available too. Velocity-based thinning gives quick flicks a natural taper.
Step 4: Shape the brush tip
In Brush tip you choose between Circle and Material. Circle is the built-in round tip, adjustable with Hardness (soft to hard edge), Thickness (squashes the circle into an oval) and Direction (rotates it). A thickness of around 20 to 40 with a fixed direction gives a simple calligraphy feel.
Material lets you load one or more images as the tip. That is where custom brushes get interesting, and it is covered in its own section below.
Step 5: Adjust stroke spacing
Every brush stroke is a row of stamped tips. In Stroke, the Gap setting decides how close those stamps sit.
- Narrow gap produces a smooth, continuous line. Use it for pens and soft painting brushes.
- Wide or a fixed large gap separates the stamps so you see individual shapes, which suits leaf, star or stitch brushes.
- Ribbon stretches a single tip along the stroke instead of stamping it, which works for ribbon, rope or chain effects.
With multiple tip images, Repeat method decides whether they appear in order, randomly or back and forth.
Step 6: Add spray or scatter if needed
The Spray category throws many small particles around the stroke center. Turn it on, set Spray size (the radius of the scatter), Particle size and Particle density. Use “Spray bias” to keep particles near the center. Combine with a material tip and random rotation for foliage, grass clusters or snow.
Step 7: Fine-tune and test
Make a test canvas with a light gradient, a hard black block and a white area. Drag strokes across all three at light, medium and heavy pressure. That shows how the brush blends, covers and tapers in one glance. Change one setting at a time; it is the only way to learn which slider caused which change.
How to Make a Custom Brush Tip from Your Own Image
A material tip is what turns a generic brush into a signature one. The process has two parts: draw the shape, then register it as material.
Drawing the tip
- Create a new canvas. Square works best; a few hundred pixels per side gives enough detail without slowing the engine. Very large tips can lag at big brush sizes.
- Set the canvas or layer expression color to Gray. Clip Studio reads brush tips by brightness, so black becomes fully opaque paint and white becomes transparent. Mid-grays become semi-transparent.
- Draw the shape in black on white. Center it, and leave a small margin so nothing touches the edge, or the stamp can show a hard cut.
- For bristle brushes, draw a row of dots or short lines of varying darkness. For texture stamps, use a scanned or painted mark converted to gray.
Registering it as material
- Go to Edit > Register Material > Image.
- Name the material and tick Use for brush tip shape.
- Choose a folder in the Material palette to save it into, and add search tags if you like.
- Click OK.
Loading the tip into your brush
- Select your duplicated brush and open Sub Tool Detail > Brush tip.
- Switch from Circle to Material.
- Click the add-material button and pick the tip you just registered. You can load several tips; they will cycle according to the Repeat method in the Stroke category.
- Set Direction to follow the line for bristle and flat brushes, or to random for organic stamps.
If the tip looks like a hard rectangle, the background was probably not pure white or the image was registered with color instead of gray. Re-register after fixing it.
Adding Paper Texture to a Clip Studio Brush
Texture makes pencils feel like pencils and gives gouache brushes a dry drag. Clip Studio applies texture inside the stroke, independent of the tip.
- Make or scan a seamless grayscale texture image, such as watercolor paper grain or canvas weave. Seamless matters: visible seams repeat across every stroke.
- Register it with Edit > Register Material > Image and tick Use for paper texture.
- In your brush’s Sub Tool Detail, open the Texture category and select the texture.
- Adjust Texture density. Mapping density to pressure is a classic trick: light pressure shows heavy grain, heavy pressure fills it in, much like a pencil on toothy paper.
- Try Scale ratio and the texture’s composite method to change grain size and how it interacts with the stroke.
Building a Dual Brush
The dual brush feature uses a second tip to mask the first, so the main stroke only shows where both overlap. It is the fastest way to get broken edges, dry brush and scraggly natural media.
- In Sub Tool Detail, open Dual brush and enable it.
- Choose a second tip. A spray of small speckles or a rough material works well.
- Set the dual brush’s size, spacing and scatter separately from the main tip.
- Pick a blending mode for the second brush; Multiply-style behavior keeps only overlapping areas.
If you do not see Dual brush in the list, update Clip Studio Paint, since it was added in a later release than many older tutorials cover.
Recipes for Common Custom Brushes
These starting points save you from guessing. Treat the numbers as ranges to adjust, not fixed rules.
| Brush goal | Base sub tool | Key settings |
|---|---|---|
| Tapered inking pen | Pen > G-pen | Size to pressure with low minimum; Starting and ending taper on; Stabilization 6–15; anti-aliasing medium |
| Textured pencil | Pencil > Real pencil | Paper texture with density tied to pressure; opacity to pressure; small hard circle tip |
| Flat oil-style blender | Brush > Oil paint | Circle tip thickness 25–40, direction follows line; color mixing on; amount of paint around 60 |
| Leaf scatter brush | Decoration > any spray | Several leaf material tips; random direction; wide gap; spray on with moderate density |
| Dry brush | Brush > Thick paint | Bristle material tip; dual brush with speckle; low amount of paint |
| Soft shading airbrush | Airbrush > Soft | Blending mode Multiply; low opacity; opacity to pressure |
Once you have a few of these working, compare them against well-regarded commercial sets. Our roundup of the best Clip Studio Paint brushes for different styles is a useful reference for seeing how experienced brush makers tune spacing, texture and pressure.
How to Save, Export and Share Your Brush
Custom sub tools are saved automatically in your Clip Studio settings, but that alone is not a backup. Export anything you would hate to lose.
- Export a single brush: drag the sub tool from the Sub Tool palette onto your desktop or a folder. Clip Studio creates a .sut file. Some versions also offer an export option in the palette’s right-click menu.
- Export a whole group: select the group tab and drag it out, or use the group export option, which bundles several brushes.
- Back up all settings: the Clip Studio launcher has a backup option for tool settings; use it before reinstalling or switching computers.
- Share through Clip Studio Assets: you can upload brushes to the official asset store as free or paid materials.
Material tips and textures used by a brush are embedded in the .sut file, so the person receiving it does not need your original images. To bring brushes back in later, our guide on adding brushes to Clip Studio Paint covers importing .sut files and assets step by step.
Common Mistakes When Making Clip Studio Brushes
- Editing the stock brush directly. You lose the original behavior. Always duplicate first, or use “Initialize sub tool” to recover a default if you already overwrote one.
- Tips with a gray or off-white background. That background becomes a faint square around every stamp. Use pure white or a transparent background with the gray expression color.
- Gap too wide for a smooth brush. If your stroke looks beaded or dotted, narrow the gap.
- Too much stabilization. High correction values make lines lag behind the pen. For painting brushes, keep it low or off.
- Huge material images. Oversized tips slow the brush, especially with spray and dual brush enabled together.
- Changing five sliders at once. You cannot tell which change helped. Adjust one category, test, then move on.
Tips by Skill Level
If you are new to Clip Studio
Start by duplicating a G-pen and a Thick paint brush and only touching Brush size dynamics, Brush tip hardness and Gap. Those three settings explain most of what brushes do.
If you already use custom brushes
Experiment with multiple material tips and Repeat method set to random, then layer a paper texture with pressure-driven density. This combination gives strokes the variety that separates hand-painted looks from clean digital fills.
If you want to sell or share brushes
Name brushes clearly, set consistent icons, test them at small and large sizes and on both light and dark canvases, and include a short note explaining which pressure curve they were designed for.
FAQs
Can you create your own brushes in Clip Studio Paint?
Yes. You can duplicate any sub tool and edit it in the Sub Tool Detail palette, or create a custom sub tool from scratch. You can also register your own images as brush tips and paper textures.
How do I make a brush from an image in Clip Studio?
Draw or paste the shape in black on a white, gray-expression canvas, choose Edit > Register Material > Image, tick “Use for brush tip shape,” then select that material in the Brush tip category of your brush.
Why does my custom brush tip show a square box?
The background of the tip image was not pure white or transparent, so Clip Studio reads it as partly opaque. Clean the background and register the material again.
What file type are Clip Studio brushes?
Individual brushes export as .sut files. You can drag a sub tool out of the Sub Tool palette to create one, and drag a .sut file back into the palette to import it.
Can I convert Photoshop brushes to Clip Studio?
Recent versions of Clip Studio Paint can import many .abr brush files, though complex Photoshop dynamics may not translate exactly. Expect to adjust spacing and pressure after importing.
How do I reset a brush I accidentally changed?
Right-click the sub tool and choose Initialize sub tool, or use the reset option in the Tool Property palette. This returns stock brushes to their default settings.
Final Thoughts
Making brushes in Clip Studio becomes straightforward once you think in layers of decisions: duplicate a base, set ink behavior, tune size and pressure, design the tip, control spacing, then add texture or a dual brush for character. Export your favorites as .sut files so they survive updates and new machines.
When you want ready-made tools to study or to fill gaps in your own kit, browse our guide to top-rated Clip Studio brush packs for inking and painting and compare their settings with the brushes you build.
