Hello everyone, in this tutorial I am going to show How to Draw one of the Fantastic Creatures of the Dark: the Ghoul!

(You can also see the full process in the video below:)

The Ghouls are flesh-eating monsters, which live in cemeteries or ruins and ambush travelers to consume their flesh, when there is no living prey they go to cemeteries’ to consume the dead.

 

Normally they’re portrayed similar to zombies or lesser demons, with a very slim build, long arms, big claw-like hands, sharp teeth, and little to no hair. Knowing what is its habitat, behavior, and description I started doing some thumbnails to define its proportion and pose.

I chose the thumbnail with a more readable silhouette and a ready-to-strike pose.

I like starting the drawing from the head, thorax, and spine because in this way we can define the facial expression and the body language through the line of action, spine.

After that, we can sketch the rest of the body following the thumbnail pose.

With the base sketch done, it is time for the “inking”, I like using the “Design Pencil” pencil brush because of its fine texture.

Now it is time to paint, starting with a flat warm color as a base is good when you want to show some red tones in parts of the skin.

Using the “Watercolor Brush”, we can paint the skin with a greenish-gray and a less saturated purple also using the brush opacity to leave some of the warm color show troughs to add some color variety.

We can use a dark purple layer in Hard Light mode to add shadows. It is very easy; you create this layer and set it as a clipping mask of the color layer, then you can erase (or use a mask) the shadow where you want the light to be.

To add a little more volume you can create a layer using the “Add” mode with a dark blue color and use the same process described in the last part.

Now to finish the image we can paint a misty background using a watercolor brush and the smudge tool.

That is it, now you know how to draw a Ghoul, hope you liked and watch out for the creatures of the dark =D