Clip Studio Paint & Photoshop

A walkthrough of aurahack’s art process, sketching, blocking out and polishing this beautiful illustration of a cyberpunk future

Hi! I’m aurahack, and I mostly draw girls, cityscapes, and abstract art of both. My process is largely self-taught and freeform, and I’m colour-blind with a background in strict illustration, so this guide will let you see how I sketch out my scene, how I approach colour, how I design cityscapes and characters, illustrate them, and make the scene work together to emphasise the ‘sense of place’ that I think is important to the art I make.

My style of illustration and process isn’t especially technical –I don’t use a lot of magic tricks or quick shortcuts – so this tutorial will be more about my thought process from start to finish than strict technical tricks. Most of what I paint, I accomplish with the same two basic brushes (included with this tutorial) and it’s more about letting inspiration and improvisational painting carry me to a concise and finished piece. I also often feature characters as the focal point of my art, sort of as a cipher for the viewer, to enable them to imagine themselves in that space. It’s a different approach to rendering what is generally very flashy subject matter, but my hope is that insight on this perspective will enable you see a new approach to making digital art/cityscapes, and will inspire you to explore new ideas.