Are you a beginning artist looking to build your skills with digital drawing? This step by step tutorial of a digital drawing of a spooky house is a great activity to develop your skills. This tutorial shows how to use layers, opacity, blending, and more! It’s fairly easy, yet produces a really cool result! So let’s make some digital marks…
* Hey educators! Scroll below to purchase this ready-for-class instructional lesson.*
What materials will I need?
In my tutorial, I will be using a free web-based drawing program, www.kleki.com. I love this program for beginners because it is so user friendly and focuses on the essentials. However, you may use any digital drawing program of your choice. It’s very beneficial if the program has layering capabilities.
I highly recommend if you are a newbie to digital drawing that you invest in a digital drawing tablet. My personal favorite is the Wacom Intuos. The set up is easy, it’s petite but effective, and the stylus has a great feel on the tablet surface. There are lots of pressure points and I just love the response of my marks to the computer.
So let’s get started! Here is a great video to show you some basics of the program. Once you’ve explored the basic features of the program and information on saving, you are ready to begin!
STEP 1:
On a new KLEKI file, go to LAYERS TAB > ADD (+) A LAYER > RENAME IT ‘BACKGROUND’
STEP 2:
Using colors of your choice, create a night sky with a moon. Use a large brush size to draw circular marks around a white circle fading from light to dark. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look perfect. The next step will fix it!
You could also use the GRADIENT tool to create a sky.
STEP 3:
Go to the EDIT tab > TRIANGLE BLUR > Choose a radius to blur the background to your liking.
STEP 4:
Add a moon in the sky. Go the SHAPE tool in the drop down > SOLID SHAPE option > Click ‘Fixed 1:1.’ Choose white or a color of your choice and draw a moon.
STEP 5:
LAYERS tab > Add (+) a layer > RENAME it ‘Silhouette’
STEP 6:
On the ‘silhouette’ layer, draw a ground using the BRUSH tool.
STEP 7:
Begin drawing the spooky house on the ‘silhouette’ layer! It is recommended to do a sketch on paper first.
Start with simple shapes. You can use either the SHAPE tool in the drop down or the ‘chemy’ brush. The ‘chemy’ brush creates solid shapes easily with a few simple lines drawn. Try it out!
STEP 8:
Next, begin erasing out the windows. In the drop down, choose the ‘SELECT’ tool > Click the POLYGON option > Draw out a window > Click ‘ERASE’
When finished, click ‘RESET’ to clear the selected area. Repeat to create as many desired windows as you’d like.
STEP 9:
Once all windows are finished, you may want to add a few more solid lines on top to add detail to the windows.
Next, go to LAYERS tab > ADD (+) a layer > RENAME it ‘GLOW’
STEP 10:
Use the brush tool to color the inside areas with a glowing light!
Next, go to LAYERS tab > ADD (+) a layer > RENAME it ‘DETAILS’
STEP 11:
On the ‘details’ layer, you can add lots of creative, spooky details such as a tree, black cat, grave stones, fence, bats, owls, and so much more!
If you’d like to add a tree, consider the ‘Y’ technique. Simply draw the tree trunk and the turn it into a ‘Y.’
STEP 12:
Continue making a ‘Y’ on each branch allowing the brush size to get smaller and smaller.
STEP 13:
Add more details!
STEP 14:
If interested, you can add spooky fog to your composition. Simply add a layer > draw white lines > use the triangle blur tool to make blur it out.
STEP 15:
As you finalize your composition, you can easily explore various color changes. With the ‘background’ layer selected, simply go to the ‘EDIT’ tab > Click HUE/SATURATION > Explore the hue level to change the color of the sky.
Here is an example of a finished spooky house composition!
*Hey teachers!* Click here for my TpT shop if you’re interested in this lesson, which features a full slideshow presentation, spooky house drawing guides, project specific grading rubric and more! *
Thanks for checking out this blog post. I would love to see your creation if you use these steps to create your own digital artwork of a spooky house. Feel free to tag me on Instagram and possibly get featured in this site! Also, please follow Make a Mark Studios on Facebook to keep up with the latest posts! Thanks in advance!
-Stephanie, art teacher and creator of Make a Mark Studios