15 Free Clip Studio Paint Brushes for Manga-Style Drawing

Download these free, custom digital brushes for Clip Studio, and take your manga illustrations to the next level

Manga is an art that's popular among creatives all over the world. Referring to Japanese comics and graphic novels—with all kinds of types and genres that are instantly recognizable—manga-style drawing often adheres to a distinct visual language. For example, "manga" might conjure up images of characters with huge eyes and small mouths...

A manga illustrator, Kenny Ruiz (@kennyruiz) uses specific tools to create his comics and achieve the distinctly expressive characteristics of manga-style art. One essential tool in his kit? Customized digital brushes.

Here, he shares fifteen digital brushes for digital painting platform Clip Studio Paint. All staples in his library, these brushes will help you improve and experiment with your own manga-style illustration!

But first, let's explore some of manga's common features and characteristics to inform your process.

What is manga?

Manga is a collective name for comics in Japan, and translates to "whimsical drawings". An artform with a rich history, while researchers disagree about its origins, it's an older style than most people think: some experts date it back to scrolls of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Still, what we think of as manga today was popularized in the 1980s thanks to manga artists like Osamu Tezuka and his creation, Astroboy. Many of the definitive attributes we assign to the genre come from this iconic reference.

Common manga features

Some of the main features and characteristics of manga-style drawings include:

- Characters with expressive eyes (to help express powerful emotions), slim silhouettes, and bodies with a proportion of seven heads or more. A recognizable outfit in manga is the Nippon-style school uniform.

- Manga is read from right to left, as in traditional Japanese writing.

- It often features a mix of cartoonish characters juxtaposed with realistic environments.

- Includes a variety of transitions between frames.

How to create a good manga comic: the cliffhanger

So, what is it about manga that has seen it become so universally popular, bridging cultures from East to West?

According to Kenny, several factors are at play. The personality of the characters and the quality of the illustration are two of them; however, he believes the most important is the strength of the narrative, i.e., the intensity of the stories.

"In the West, we have been educated to consume stories in the classic style: introduction, turning point, outcome, and we patiently wait for the plot to reach the climax. In manga, on the other hand, each page has an input of information, each scene tells us something new, and each sequence reaches a new level with the story," Kenny summarizes.

He emphasizes that the secret of good manga is to understand how the information is spread out, how the characters become more charismatic on each page, and how they use a cliffhanger to extend the climax and grab the readers.

Download free digital brushes for manga-style illustration

In the file below, you will find fifteen brushes for manga-style digital illustration from Kenny Ruiz's library. These are brushes in .sut. format for use with Clip Studio Paint.

After clicking on the button below, you will find a .zip file in the Downloads folder of your computer containing the file, 15 Free Clip Studio Paint Brushes for Manga-Style Drawing, by Kenny Ruiz. You may need to use free software, such as WinZip, to unzip the file. After unzipping, the brushes will be available in the Downloads folder on your computer.

Sign up for Kenny Ruiz's course Manga Comics: Narrative, Rhythm, and Composition. Throughout, you will learn to captivate your readers by learning to narrate and compose stories with Clip Studio Paint that follow the energetic rhythm of a manga.

English version by @acesarato.

Learn more about the world of manga

To explore everything from the art of drawing manga to kawaii-style illustration, check out all of Domestika's online manga courses, and read on for more inspiration...

1. Pick up new skills and tips from Japanese-style illustration experts with these free manga and sumi-e drawing tutorials 

2. Discover the iconic works of great manga artists that made history

3. If you're new to the art of manga, take a look at Natalia Batista's comprehensive course, Manga Comics for Beginners: From Concept to Creation.