Sketching a Spooky Scene
Grab your trusty pencil and paper and prepare to draw an eerie scene. With a few simple steps and a bit of time and patience, you’ll be able to create a spooky graveyard just in time for Halloween. Get inspired and ready to draw as we show you how to bring a cemetery to life!
Tips and Tricks
Before you start your graveyard sketching, make sure to sketch the basic shape of your masterpiece beforehand. You may want to draw a border and a scale to help measure the measurements for your sketch. Once the initial shape is drawn, break up your graveyard into quadrants and draw in the elements and details for each section. This will help your sketching process go much smoother.
Take your time and draw the design in a grid-like pattern. This will fill out the details of your cemetery and create a finished look and feel. Be sure to divide the cemetery into four quarters, adding smaller and larger tombstones, trees, and other features as desired. When adding details, make the tombstones in different sizes to get a realistic feel. Don’t forget to finish the cemetery with a few spooky skeletons and even a headstone or two!
Shading Secrets
Now it’s time to shade your masterpiece. Opt for a soft, medium-grade pencil and apply light pencil strokes between the tombstones and trees to create a foggy, spooky feel. If you want to add some depth to the image, add shadows to give a three-dimensional effect. To add shadows, draw the shadows on the opposite side of each character or object.
To give the impression of night-time in the cemetery, use a range of tones from dark to light to create a high contrast of shadows. You can even add shadows behind certain elements to give the picture extra depth. Once you’re done, you’ll have a moody and atmospheric graveyard sketch to show off to your friends.
Bring it to Life
Now that your graveyard is all drawn up, it’s time to bring it to life! To add a realistic touch, sketch in a few small critters, such as bats, crows, and spiders. Include a variety of devious creatures to make your drawing extra creepy. Once you’re done, you can add a few highlights to any part of the drawing, like a flashlight coming from a window off in the distance, or a lightning strike over the graveyard.
You can enhance your sketch with some soft colouring, too. Using either coloured pencils or markers, add pastels and hues of colour to give your picture even more life and depth. Make sure to play around with your chosen colours and mix them up to create a spooky yet charming graveyard. Add highlights, shadows and enough natural colour to give your graveyard a realistic finished look.
Standing Out from the Crowd
Drawing your own graveyard isn’t easy. You’ll probably want to add a few touches of your own in order to make your graveyard truly stand out from the crowd. Make sure to add a few personal touches to make the drawing yours, like a scarecrow, a pair of glowing eyes, a cracked gravestone, or an abandoned well.
A great way to make your cemetery truly unique is to draw your own characters, such as a ghostly figure, a zombie, a witch, a werewolf, or a monster. Give them a hint of personality by adding gruesome touches like rags, torn clothing, and decaying features.
Finally, when you’re happy with your sketch, add a few final finishing touches, like a setting moon, a pillar of fog, or skeletal hands crawling from the ground. These touches will add an extra spooky feel to your graveyard, making it a frightfully amazing picture!
