Drawing a Halloween Character from Start to Finish

I'm quieter about it than most, but I'm one of those people to whom Halloween is a religion, and as such it's my favorite time to create. I recently made this image in the spirit of the season, and as I went I decided to take screenshots of what I was doing so that I could show others my methods.

I've been drawing "seriously" for about three or four years now, and it's kind of annoying because I'm not seeing a tremendous deal of improvement. Hopefully by breaking it down into pieces I'll be able to see areas in the method that need improving. Also, if any fellow amateurs come across this, I hope it helps encourage them to keep trying for themselves.

These first few sketches I made in a PowerPoint slide. I use a Huion Kamvas Pro 16 drawing tablet, which lets you see what you're drawing on its own screen.

I started off by drawing a "skeleton" of the character, so I knew what they looked like. I draw my characters roughly using this method I've described here.

The three circles are the size of the character's head. Most of my characters are around three heads tall.

I drew some clothes on them and erased some of the details so now I have a clear "model" for the character. They look kind of like Sonic the Hedgehog meets Hazbin Hotel, which... pretty much sums up my character style.

At the side, I doodled some extra features like the character's brooch and makeup, so I knew what I wanted some of the closer details to look like. I find it helps when you can't fit everything on the model itself, or you want to shop ideas around.

The next step is to decide what we want our character to be doing in our image. To do that, we can draw some "thumbnails" - very quick, very bad doodles that are just there so we can try out some poses. You can do this as many times as you like, or you might just do one if you already have a clear idea.

I drew three thumbnails, and somewhat foolishly I decided to go with the first one, which is the most complicated one because it has background elements.

With this in mind, I drew a "rough" sketch of the character where they're matching the thumbnail's pose. I referred back to the model I made earlier so I knew what they looked like.

The drawing on the left is the rough sketch itself, while the drawing on the right is after I erased the more scribbly "skeleton" features so I could see more clearly what they looked like.

The next stage is something I call the "refined sketch". This is a more tidied-up version that I drew over the rough sketch, adding in a little more detail as I go.

You can see to the right the character model is there to refer back to. You can also see just underneath the refined sketch is the grayed-out rough sketch itself.

If you want, you can draw another refined sketch on top of the current sketch to add yet more detail and definition. You can do as many refined sketches as you like until you're happy with the result.

I switched over to Paint Tool SAI to draw a second refined sketch on top of the first one.

Once you've finally got a clear final image that you like, it's time to trace over it with lineart, or "linework" as Paint Tool SAI calls it. 

Paint Tool SAI is my weapon of choice for digital art because it has a special linework layer that allows you to point-and-click to create lines, then drag them around with a mouse to change their position or thickness. However, I didn't go with this method this time round - I just drew black lines with my pen over a normal layer.

I tried to use long, big, confident strokes for each line, which meant I had to keep undoing and drawing the line again until I got it in the position I wanted (the artist's favorite buttons on the keyboard are CTRL and Z). It's fine to let the lines go shooting right off the sketch, you can erase the edges of them as you go.

Other than this, the only "rule" I tried to keep in mind was lines on the outisde = thick, lines on the inside = thin. The thick lines in this image were drawn with a 10pt pen, while the thin lines were made with an 8pt pen.

At this point I noticed my character's hand looked a little weird for my taste, so I went back and added an extra layer between sketch and linework just so I could draw a more refined hand on top of it.

Hands in general are notoriously difficult to draw - in my files there's a whole two pages of hands. I didn't follow any particular method of drawing them, I just copypasted a bunch of drawings from digital artists who I thought had hands similar to what I was going for, then drew copies of those hands just from the eye.

This brings me to my personal golden rule of being an artist: if in doubt, steal. If you don't know where you're going, you follow a guy who looks like he knows where he's going.

Once we've done the linework, we can color it in. However, here I decided I wanted to draw the background first.

For a background, you need perspective. The first thing I did on a new layer was draw the "horizon line", which is where you think the horizon will be. A horizon line near the bottom of the page means you're looking up at something, while a horizon line near the top means you're looking down.

(You can draw straight lines in Paint Tool SAI by clicking on one area, then holding down Shift and clicking another area - a straight line will appear between one point and the other.)

Then I made a bunch of lines radiating out from the center of the horizon line (the "vanishing point") to create what I call a "perspective star". These come in handy when drawing backgrounds because they determine where things like lines are facing towards.

With this in mind, I sketched a rough background based on my original thumbnail. The hill is actually on its own layer in the foreground, since the character is meant to look like they're stepping over it.

Now, I have to confess I started to rush a little here. Instead of doing any more refined sketches over these rough sketches, I just went drew the linework straight on top of them. There's nothing wrong with this, of course, but making refined sketches will help guide your linework and improve the final result.

The linework for the clouds was a bit of a pain - and I don't suppose clouds really need linework. I think maybe you can just sketch them straight on in white or gray paint.

Now I decided to color the character in. These are the "flat" colors, or the "true" colors - they're what the character looks like without any shading or highlights. Referring back to the character's "refined" sketch, I added in some extra details such as their makeup, cuffs and the icon on their brooch, which don't really need any linework.

The character's color scheme is made up of blue, yellow and black. I don't really know anything about color theory, but if you look up a color wheel online, you'll see that the blues and the yellows are on opposite sides of each other. This means they stand out more clearly from each other.

Next I added flat colors to the background features. You'll see I also removed the lines from the clouds up above, since clouds tend to have soft edges.

It's mostly dark colors because it's a night scene - the buildings at the back are completely black, because it's so dark and they're so far away you can only see their silhouettes. Things like open doors and windows give off a distinct orange light, so you have some indication of what the building is.

I knew I wanted lime-green magic to be flying out the character's hand and bleeding into the clouds, so I made a rough lime-green sketch of it here. There's a long trail for the magic itself, and I've marked the sides of the clouds I want to have a greenish glow.

Now comes the shading. I did the background first because I felt it was easier. The night sky is darker at the top than it is at the bottom, while the background buildings and the ground are darker at the bottom than at the top. I used the airbrush tool to achieve these effects, as well as the green glow on the edges of the clouds (there's more green on the bottom of the clouds than at the top).

It was also at this point I realized I'd forgotten to add white stripes to the character's shoes. It's alright to go back and change things - in digital art, you're not committed to anything at all until you hit the "upload" button.

Then it was time to add shadows to the character, and - I'm not going to lie to you - this was the part that gave me the most trouble.

I'll be blunt: I don't know the first thing about shading. I've watched a few tutorials on the subject and - I'll be honest - they all seem like they're just making wild guesses about where the shadows might be. I know it involves drawing over the image using a multiply layer (in layerspeak, "multiply" means darken). But in terms of where precisely to put the shadows, and how big they should be, I'm lost.

My own method of shading the character here consists of four parts:

1. Determine where the main light source will be (HINT: it’s gonna be up and to the side)
2. Decide what color the shadows will be (HINT: they’re gonna be very dark blue)
3. ???
4. Profit

It might help to keep the multiply layer at high opacity to start with, so you can clearly see where the shadows are (and thus where the light's hitting as well). Afterwards I turned it down to 25%.

One thing I did was use the shadows to "draw out" some markings on the character's ascot. This lets you know it's got little bumps and ridges where the light can't get to in a way that's less intrusive than drawing hard lines.

I had my shadows in mind so that the main light source of the scene was the magic coming off the character's hand. I kept my lime green magic doodle faintly on screen at low opacity to keep track of this.

Drawing the actual magic streak was just following along with little lime strokes over the doodle, bulking out and erasing parts as I go. Behind it I airbrushed in a green glow, and over the top of it I added in little splotches of an even lighter green.

Next I wanted to add some "glows" onto the character with a lime green airbrush, so show how intense the magic light is. These glows are strongest and thickest right on the hand, but all of them are found where the color on the character is still "flat" and not shaded (you won't find any lights in the shadows).

You can see a tiny little streak of green light on the opposite side of the character's head. As far as I know, light doesn't just shine on things - it bounces off them too, which means it's probably springing all over the place. So parts of it might get caught in further-away places. I think. Look, I noticed that part of the hair wasn't shaded, so I added a little streak out of curiosity, and I decided it looked good. The only "correct" way of drawing and coloring is whatever you think looks good.

With the character completed, I decided to add a few more lights and details to them. I turned their sclera slightly yellow and added bright yellow shimmers to their pupils (a little light spot inside an eye really helps give it direction and intensity). I added a similar yellow glow to the side of the golden brooch facing the magical light, and did likewise to the "eyes" in the character's cane. I also added some extra shine and shadow to the character's teeth.

Finally, I wanted to add some stars in the night sky. They're just little bluish dots at around 30% opacity. If you're struggling with where to put your stars, the Etherington Brothers have a great method for randomizing them: draw a few crisscrossing lines in the background, and wherever they cross over, put a star on top of them. Then, in the middle of the spaces between the lines, put a smaller star inside. Of course, I ended up doing this the wrong way round and put my bigger stars in the spaces and my small stars on the lines, but the result's still fine.

I put more stars near the top of the sky than at the bottom - I think the bottom is more obscured by a sort of mist.

Finally, I added in the moon. It's just a big gray-blue circle with 50% opacity, with an airbrushed glow on the layer above it also at 50% opacity. I put it right in the middle of the clouds, so it looks like they're pointing to it. 

After this, it's only a matter of going back over the picture and erasing/altering a few tiny imperfections that you're fairly certain no one is going to notice anyway.

All in all, this took about a couple of evenings to do. If any big-shot digital artist just so happens to be reading this and is thinking "listen, buddy, you're doing it wrong", then by all means let me know. I'd like to hear any advice on how to improve. Especially with those damn shadows.