Mid-Century Illustration Fun: Make it Spooky!

1. Let's Get Spooky!: Hello, Mid Century lovers and welcome to the spooky Special Edition class. I'm Jutta. I'm an artist and educator from Germany, and I am a sucker for mid century illustration styles. I've already created a series of mid century Illustration classes, and this one is a follow up to my previous Mid-Century Illustration Fun core class. In this one, we'll take our skills up a notch by creating a full colored Halloween illustration, ready to share or add to your portfolio. This time we'll be working digitally in Procreate, and I'll share all the tools and tricks you need to create this cute and spooky mid century illustration. I'll guide you step by step through the process from sketching to adding rich textures, and by the end, you have a finished piece that's worth sharing. A little side note. This class builds on what I teach in the main class. If you haven't checked that out yet, I recommend doing so first as it gives you the right foundation before diving into this one. With that said, let's get spooky. I see you in class. As. 2. Class Project & Preparations: In this class, we'll create a Halloween themed illustration, obviously. And of course, that's the project I'd like for you to post in the project gallery. To be fully prepped and equipped for the drawing process, you want to make sure you've watched the core class, Mid-Century Illustration Fun, make it wonky, have your iPad and stylus ready, and you've downloaded and imported the resources I've provided in the project and resources tab. You'll find a Procreate brush set and my color palette there, as well as the link to yet another Pinterest mood board. Now, before I created my illustration, I went ahead and built my Halloween themed visual library, the way I teach in my flagship class. I've collected items I wanted to portray and drew them in different variations until I found the style I liked best. You can skip this deep and draw exactly what I do or go the extra mile and create a visual library with Halloween items you love and make your own project totally up to you. Alright, I think that's all we need for prep, so let's get started with our sketch in the next video. I'll see you there. 3. Sketch: Alright. Here I am in Procreate now and ready for my sketch. Since I want to share my illustration, I've opened a canvas with 2000 by 2,500 pixels. In our first step, I want to move over to plaque and pick my MCN sketcher brush, and then I'm going to roughly draw in two lines across and two lines from top to bottom to kind of mark the rule of thirds, which we should be following in our illustration process. On a new layer, we can start with our sketch. In all your illustrations, you should have a certain hierarchy. Your main motif should always be on either of those lines or those meeting points here. In my illustration, I want to show a little girl like being on a trick or tree trip and a haunted house in the background, and some typical mid century items spread across the canvas just as a filler. So let's start with a very, very rough sketch. Although I want to make my rule of third here a little bit less visible. So I'm on layer two, and I start roughly laying down my motif. So here in the foreground, I want to have a little girl walking with her pumpkin back for trick or treat and a broomstick, as I think I want her to be a witch. So this is kind of on this point here, and in the background is going to be a haunted house somehow. It's a wonky one. That's for sure. And the moon, I want to have the moon, as well. A big one, it's full moon to make it really spooky. And then here we're gonna have like maybe a tree, a spooky one. And some other items maybe maybe a tombstone or pumpkin. Oh, maybe there's even a skull head hanging from the tree. Then here we have another pumpkin maybe like this, another skull, and even a black cat. You can't miss a black cat. And here, it seems to be a little empty, so let's put another pumpkin down here on this line. Course, we need some bets here. So my main motif, the girl in the foreground, looks pretty good. I think I want to make it a tiny tad bigger. Then the pumpkin here a little bit more towards the bottom. We have always room for changes later on. But I guess I want my haunted house a little bit bigger. But we can add to it. So it's not gonna be too empty. So we could have a little paths. And I guess that's a rough composition already, which I really like. I just want to make sure that these two items aren't on the same height to just have it a little bit more interesting. So this goes up, and this little group here goes down. And then later on, we can still add some beds or stars or other fillers. All right, so that's a rough sketch. Let's move on. Add another layer, turn this opacity, like, really down. And I think we also don't need our rule of thirds anymore. I think the moon needs to come down a little bit because I want to have something like a frame around my background color, something like this. But you can make your you can make the entire background in your background color. That's totally fine. I just love having a little white frame for whatever reasons. I can't really tell you. Alright, the moon goes here. All right. So let's go over to the tree. So I want this tree to be really wonky, and I think we won't be able to see the roots at the bottom. I want to cover them because I usually don't really know how to draw the roots. So I want to have a few branches, like a few thicker ones. And then I want to have a lot of twigs that are kind of, like, really crooked and wonky. Okay, that's the tree. So from our tree, we have, like, a really wonky skull hanging down with bigger and a smaller eye and the teeth. And as I said, I want the roots to be covered, first of all, maybe from a nice tombstone here. And then in front of the tombstone, we even have a pumpkin. So let's erase the strokes we won't need. And I think I want to have rest in peace here. Maybe we are going to draw the tree a little bigger. Then it would be nice if the branches look a little bit like peek a little bit into the moon. Okay. Alright, now our haunted house. Okay, so I want to have, like, a really wonky. Look here. And I also like when the roofs have these kind of wonky round ends here. So our house has some windows. And in the roofs, we have some tiles, maybe, indication with some lines. I just don't like this roof right here. I want to put it a little bit down, although otherwise it's too much on the same height here. So, how about we have a really wonky balcony here? And I think the house is gonna be black and the windows probably in our orange or so. So some beds definitely appear. And I always want to make sure I have an odd number of items. I think that looks better. Even numbers kind of if you have four or six, that doesn't look as interesting as if you have an odd number. So I don't know. That's just my opinion. So we have another skull here. I like when they have two different sizes of eyes that kind of gives them a little bit of I don't know, dumb look less spooky. So I want I want the skull and the pumpkin to overlap. Do I like that? I think I wish the the skull wouldn't be on the same level as the pumpkin to just have a little bit more maybe like this a little bit more depth. A little bit further down. Okay. Maybe like so. And then it's not so crowded with the mouth and the eye is here. Let's do the mouth once more. No, I think the cat is way too big. And I'm afraid that the top of the pumpkin will not be won't be visible when the cat's there. So let's let's twist it a little bit around maybe like this. But then we have the bottom of the cat, maybe. Let's start with the bottom of the cat first. Okay. That's wonky enough. And then she gets some ice, but probably not this oval shape, but this oval shape like this. Yes, I guess I like that. And then we have this pumpkin here in the foreground. This is how I draw my ovals, and then I erase what I think doesn't look good. Okay. That looks gorgeous already. Right now, I want to add a new layer, and this is where I put my main character, this little little witch girl kind of situation. I expect to have more changes and erasing on this little girl character. That's why it's a good idea to put it on a different layer because all the erasing won't damage the background. Okay, so let's see. Let's see. So I definitely want her to have a tiny round face. Not too round, though. And I wanted to have, like, a very pointy nose. And then we have the hair. The eyes are going to be here and a little cute mouth, smiling mouth because she's very excited. That she goes. She's going to get a lot of treats now. So then we need a tiny witch hat. Maybe this bump here, maybe the bottom is not perfect yet. Then I think this needs to be more straight. Kids usually have, like, a little thicker and more bulged forehead, so I want to indicate that here, too, to make her cute. Okay, so now we have the dress, and to make cute characters, we always have to keep in mind that needs to be very big compared to the rest of the body. But I want to you know what? I want to add. No, I'm still not happy with the hair. Yes, I think I like that. Alright. But I want to also add some more hair on the other side of her head like this, peeks out from behind because she has beautiful curls. And then here we have the dress. And since she's walking in this direction, her body needs to lean forward a little bit. So I'm going to draw her dress maybe like this. My characters usually get, like, a really, really small body compared to the hat. Yeah, this is massive, but it's really cute. It's really cute. And then one leg is to the front because she's walking like this. One leg is just loosely towards the back like this. I think I want the legs even more in the front of the dress. And at the end of her Oops, at the end of her legs, she's gonna have like little boots. Like witches shoes, but really tiny. Just with some laces. And here, the same. And they curve like upwards in the front, and they have wonky shoe laces. Great. We miss an ear. Here, I see that we miss an ear in her hair, and I'm still not very happy with her hair do. I see. So we need an ear. That's for sure. The ear is kind of at the same height as her eyes. We're getting there. The sketch usually is what takes the longest. Like this. Boop, boop, boop. Yes, that's better, I guess. Maybe not that big of a bump. And we can still make some changes later on when we fill it with color. Yes, I guess. Now that's where I want to go. Okay, so her one arm goes to the back pretty long and she carries her broom. Kind of like this with some lines in there, and her hand is here, fingers here, and the thumb comes from the other side. And here we have the arm. And this one has the eyes towards the front and maybe some sort of this mouth, like with stitches. Oh, yes, sweet. How cool. I like it. I just think she still is too long. So maybe I should shorten the legs a little bit. I think that's gorgeous. I just want to make sure that the shoe here doesn't end up being covered from her arm. I don't want to make like an angle. I really want to make a round curve. Who cares about, like, real bodies? That's the charm of mid century illustration. You can just do whatever you want and have it. The wonky it looks, the better it is. Oh, yes. I like that a lot. Let's turn off the first sketch. No, that's not the one. Let's turn off the rough sketch. It looks brilliant. I really like it. I might change a little bit from this pumpkin. It kind of is in the same line as the group here. And I guess it's a little bit too big. So let's make it a bit Oops. Let's make it a bit. Oh, I'm not on the right layer. So let's go back to this layer. Here we have a little bit of an empty spot. So why don't we add a big bed here? Maybe like this. My beds are gonna look like. Maybe I should draw that for you. My beds usually have one zig zac then a small zig zag as the head of the bat and another big zig zag for the wing. Then I go up at another zig zag. This is the body, another zig zag, and this is the wing. And this is how my beds usually look. This one needs a phase. Great. And I think I'm pretty happy with my little girl. Besides the hair, I'm not happy with the hair still. Well, that's why we si That's why we sketch beforehand. We want to be happy with our motif, so And I think her dress will get a little color up here, a belt, maybe, and some whatever at the bottom. Still, the head is not in the right position, I guess. Whoops. Oh. Here we go. Yes. Yes. Now, I think that's great. I think I really like that. So, how are we with our overall hierarchy? I think our haunted house could be a little bigger. Okay. Now, let's check. Our girl could be a tiny tad bigger. So let's go to this layer and just make it a tiny bit bigger. Maybe we can even squish it a little bit. Okay. And in the end, we're going to add some more details to just have some fillers in there. But for now, I'm really happy with the outcome. Great. Okay, so let's move on to the next step, where we lay down the colors for our illustration. I'll see you in the next video. 4. Color Rough: And welcome back. So now we want to lay down the colors for our illustration. And first of all, we might want to clean up some of the lines. I think we can get rid of the rough sketch, and we don't need this anymore, but we just use that as a placeholder to be able to add layers underneath our sketch. And we can pinch these two together. Then we have our sketch in one layer to save on layers. And now I'm on my eraser. So let's check and see what we don't need. We don't need this corner here. Let's turn the visibility down a little bit. And as I said, we're going to add a layer underneath. And now we want to indicate what gets which color. All right. Since I want this to be a mid century illustration, I don't like the base color to be white, pure white. It always reminds me of a little bit of yellowed paper from an old book. So that's why I want to turn the background into beige at the very bottom. Let's add another layer. And here we go to lay down the colors just roughly. So I'm with my fountain pen. And I guess since this is gonna be a night scene, I want a purple background. Then I want the moon to be in this of white color, as well. I want, of course, the skulls in white. The haunted house, of course. This is supposed to be black. The cat. The cat is supposed to be black. The end of the broom, I think it's gonna be black. I think the girl is gonna get, like ginger orange hair. Alright. Mmm. Oh, the broomstick can be orange. Oh, and the windows. Let's turn the sketch into linear burn or multiply. Then we can see our lines, even though the bottom layer is black. So let's make our windows orange to have it look like there's light. That's enough orange. It's spread nicely. Great. Let's go with our green. I think I want her dress to be green. And then I think we need something green up there. Maybe, maybe we draw a little monster, something here in this window. How about that? That could be fun. That could be really fun. Oops. Let's go with black, so maybe I like this here, Burb. Yes, I guess I like that. Okay. And then we just need I think the rest is just gonna be white. How about we draw the steps in white? And the shoes are gonna stay black. Yes, I think I'm happy with that. This is how I want to lay down the colors. So let's move on to our next lesson where we draw our final illustration. I'll see you there. 5. Color Blocking: Welcome back. So now it's time to start with our real illustration, where we have to put a little bit of effort in defining the shapes. Let's just do that in a new layer. So we can turn this off for now. I want to keep the Beige bottom layer, and I want to add another one for the background. The end, I might erase some of the purple with my beautiful shader grain smooth brush. But for now, I'm just going to draw like a rectangle with rounded corners. I have two brush sizes for my mid century fountain pen saved. This one is at 9%, and this one is at 5%. And I'm going to start with a thicker one to just define the shapes. Alright, so let's start with the purple background. I add another layer, and here I want to lay down the moon. Okay, on top of that, I will start with my black layer. The black layer for the haunted house. Okay. And then we make sure we have all the corners closed that we can color drop. And the rest of the line I will be drawing with the smaller brush size. So now let's go ahead and draw the tree. No. Oh, a very nice bookie tree. I like that. Okay. I think we can also draw our cat here. Okay, beds and all the embellishments, I'm going to draw in the end on a separate layer. So let's move on layer wise. On this white layer from the moon, we can also draw the slabs and at least this skull. So let's go back to that layer. And I want to make sure they kind of look trapezoid, but really, really off and she's going to cover that. That's okay. That creates depth. Even though we stay still, quite minimalistic in our illustration, we are still able to create some depth by just having things overlapping. And if you want the corners to be pointy, you just erase et's see in our next layer, I think we are going to go. Let's see. Let's go with green on our next layer, and it needs to be on top of the black one. And this is where we're going to draw our tombstone. And with a head, I'm not sure. I think the green head needs to go on top because on the next layer, we need orange. So orange is on top of this tombstone. I actually think we can on the white layer, we can also draw her face. And even though the dress is gonna overlap that, I can show you a little trick. And I know the dress overlaps the face, and we don't want that. So we can make a little trick here. We're on the white layer with the face, and we're going to erase something from the dress, and that we don't have a gap down here, we're going to erase that seamlessly, and I show you how that works. So we're going to go back to the white layer, and we say select. Now we go to the green layer and we can see there's this selected area from the face and those stripes here from the area that's unselected. So that means the green here is in the selected area from the shape of the face, and we're just going to use our three fingers to erase that. And now it's seamlessly erased and we don't have a gap here in between. That's very, very handy trick. Okay, now we can go back to the orange layer and draw the girl's hair. Let's add a layer below the white one. So now we need her legs. We can draw them on the white layer as well. Oh, we forgot the arms. We need our arms. Alright, we need another skull. But I guess this one also needs to have a separate layer. So let's add that on top of everything. We need the green hat. I'm just gonna simply add another layer since I have enough space, and then I want to draw the hat. All right, we still miss the windows. So on our orange layer, we can add the windows. Let's check if we have everything we want to show like this. Yes. I guess that's looking pretty, pretty fantastic. Alright. So let's move on for the details and lineworks in our next video. I'll see you there. 6. Line Work & Details: And welcome back. So in this lesson, we are going to follow up with the linework, and I'm going to, for sure, go one size smaller with my brush, and I am going to add a new layer on top. And I will start with the black lines first. She said, and picked white. So I want to start with my black lines first. Okay. So what I want to add here is like a little string next, we move on to the tombstone. What I also want to add is, you know, some bottom texture. And our bata. And later on, we will give him some cute little ice to have it like really spooky. And the broom here. Her head needs to have a ribbon. Let's move on. So here we have a pumpkin bucket. He Oh, she needs to She works on the floor. Of course, she casts a shadow as well, which is just some simple lines. Just some random marks. And let's move on to our skull here. That looks pretty fantastic already. So let's move on here. And, of course, the window have like these kind of bars in them. The wonkier, the better, don't forget. Oh, and we need Oh, behind that, we need the green monster. We didn't draw the green monster. Let's put that on the same layer as the head. H. And then let's go back to the black linework layer and finish the roof. And then, of course, we need our bets. Okay, let's turn off the sketch for a second and see where we are. Oh, boy. I love that. I like it. So what do I want to add? Let me think. I think we need more bottom stuff here. Oh, and I want to indicate some depth here. And Oh, I love how it comes together. I think I want rotate her face a tiny tat. Yes. Next, what we miss some white linework so add another layer. And, of course, you needs hands. And some loops in her hair, as well. And what else do we need? Oh, some definition in the house. Oh, and our monster, of course, it needs eyes. A big one and a small one. And because I don't want to add a new layer, I'm going to add the eyeballs in there. Yes, like this. That is so fun. Oh, the kitty cat also needs some pupils. Like this. Oh, I love that. I really love that. I think the little girl needs some eyebrows. How about we draw them like this? Cool. Yes. I think then we can move on to our last step, which is adding some texture. I hope you like what we have so far. It's still a little bit plain. That's why we gonna add some more texture, and I'll see you in the next video. 7. Final Touches: All right. And here we go again in our final step, which is adding a little bit of texture. And in this case, we are switching our brush to the shader grain smooth. And then we are going to start with a purple background where I want to erase something from this purple rectangle, which is too equal for my taste. I want it to look like they didn't add enough paint, maybe. Thus, there wasn't color everywhere. So that's why I want to erase some parts of our purple background rectangle, and I'm going to erase with this shade or grain. For example, this corner here looks a little bit too plain. So I'm just going to erase a little bit from it here. Just irregular. And I guess a little bit from here. I just want to make sure that we don't see the edge anymore at all. Yes, that adds a lot of character already. Okay. Then, of course, I want to give some of my items a little bit of a texture, a shade texture. So let's move on and add another layer. Let's start from the bottom and move towards the top. I want to add a layer on top of the purple background hair layer, and I want to turn it into a clipping mask, it only draws on this layer, and then with the shader grain, I want to add a little bit of texture towards the bottom of her hair. The next layer is the white one, so we add another layer, turn that into a clipping mask, as well. And then we add a little bit of texture to our skull, maybe to the path. What Obviously, the black layer won't get any shading, but the green layer clipping mask. And then we add some texture here. Only the dress has some shading, but not her arm. Cool. Then let's move on to the orange layer. Add a layer, turn it into a clipping mask, and add some more shading to our orange items. And if that's too dark for you, that's no problem at all. You can turn down the opacity by tapping this little N and turn down here, the slider to the left, so you can make it more or less visible, just that you like it. This skull here needs a little bit of texture. So clipping mask on top. What else? The head? We said the head is getting some. Let's add another layer, turn it into a clipping mask. That looks perfect. I just want to add some more white lines to indicate movements. So I'm going to switch to my dashes brush. I'm going to go back to the white layer, and I'm going to pick white, obviously. And now I want to make the things move by just adding tiny little curves. So the bat gets some the broom is swinging. Of course, the pumpkin bucket is swinging. And the cat's tail and maybe here. Oh, these beds up there don't have any yes yet. So at least this one needs some yes. So let's go to the B to the fountain pen, and we could also add some stars. How about some stars here and there? So great how everything comes together. I think the only part that's missing is a little bit of paper texture. So let's add another layer. Turn the color to black and go to the stipples brush here. Oh, by the way, if you rather want to add, like, really nice stars, then I've added this brush in your brush set, but I want to go with wonky ones, so I like that better, which is absolutely total preference. But back to the stipples, I want to mark some Black, subtle stipples into the paper, that it's not just plain white, just to take away this digital appearance and I'm going to play with the opacity again, that it's subtle. It's there, but it doesn't jump right into your face. I guess I want to add even another layer and this time I'm going to do the stipples with white like this. Again, I'm going to turn down the opacity a little bit. So there is a subtle texture, but not too crazy. And in our final step, I add another layer, and this time, I turn the blend mode by tapping this little N into linear burn. And we switch to our beige color. And this time, I want to pick the Crenson paper texture, and this just does magic. It turns like a blank canvas into a piece of paper like this. And by turning the blend mode to linear burn, it just brings a little bit more saturation in the colors and blends everything together nicely. So here you can see, we added the paper texture. The digital appearance is gone completely. And our illustration is done. Let's look at it in all its glory. I really like it. If you think the paper texture is too strong, just again, go ahead and turn down the opacity of this layer. But for this one, I really like it. You can even see it in the Black house. So I'm absolutely happy with my illustration. I hope so are you. Now you go ahead. You export it by tapping the wrench icon. Then you go to share, you pick whatever format you like. I usually export it as a JPAC and then you save it in your camera roll. In your next step, you can just post it. Again, don't forget if you post it on TikTok or Instagram, always tag me in your image that I can see your art. Let's move on to the final lesson where we wrap up the class. I see you there. 8. Wrap Up: And here we are with our full colored spooky mid century style illustration. Throughout this class, you approached your illustration much like you would a professional Klein project, collecting inspiration, trying out different variations, sketching and planning ahead, keeping hierarchy and composition in mind, and finally creating a polished, sharable illustration. Now, I'd love to see what you came up with. Please share your artwork in the project gallery. It's such a great place to get feedback to inspire others or to encourage in return. If you've enjoyed this class, leaving a review really helps more students to find it, and I'd be forever grateful. Feel free to follow my social media channels to stay up to date with future projects and upcoming classes. And if you love mid century Illustration style as much as I do, keep an eye out for more classes, as I have planned a full series around the same. Thanks so much for watching. I can't wait to see your spooky creations in the Project gallery. And now, see you in my next class. Bye.