Introduction

Hello everyone. In this tutorial we will create a character inspired by all the gothic things.

 

But what exactly that means? Word "gothic" can be understood in many different ways as e.g. a historic architectural era (buildings with lot of ornaments) or clothes the people are wearing even nowadays (like gothic lolita). It also connects strongly with Halloween when this word relates to vampires and other frighetning creatures. Because of all those things I decided to create a mish mash of all the elements, that I mentioned above. Interesting, right?

 

The pitch is to create a gothic Halloween character, with a gothic fashion surrounded by gothic architecture. I chose to draw a little vampire witch in Gothic Lolita fashion.

 

Also this tutorial also has a video, where you can see every step of the process so please check it out too!

 

Please click here:

 

Gothic Lolita fashion

Before jumping straight away to drawing the character it is better to do some design sketches first. Because the clothing is going to be an important element of this illustration I will explain a little bit about the Gothic Lolita fashion.

The lolita fashion is highly inspired by Victorian era, it means the clothing usually has a lot of layers and ornaments. The Gothic part of this fashion trend is made with darker materials like dark and red. However, the basic shape of the dress is highly shared between the classic Lolitas and the Gothic ones.

Because there are a lot of options, when it comes to Lolita fashion I recommend you to first make a little search online to see some real life photos of the outfits. It can be a bit overwhelming at first to try to design your own dress and other accessories at the beginning. So I reccoment to first make a few sketches based on the reference you are looking at.

I made a basic body and on top of it I sketched few different outfits. Now I have a better understanding of all the elements.

Looking from the top of the character you can see there is usally some head accessory, a necklace, a collar with many frills, belt with a big bow, a skirt with many layers, tights with some ornaments and decorated ballet pumps. But there are more options, those elements are the ones, that I found and liked.

Lace and bows

The important part of the Gothic Lolita fashion is the lace. As you can see I used a lot of those in my sketches. Here I will show you few design options that you can use for lace.

Because drawing lace can be time consuming, you can use other options. Already in Clip Studio Paint there are few lace and frill decorations brushes. With them you can very quickly add this element to the outfit.

But there are of course many other options to be found in the Asset store. I recommend you to check it out. I will also post few options below.

Drawing bows and ribbons can be tricky too, because there are many options too. Here few examples, that you can use:

Or you can also use a brush from the Assets store.

Sketch

At first I want to see what position the character is going to be in. I had a vague idea of a witch sitting on sofa while eating a cake. So I started making some sketches based on that idea.

I made 2 completly different poses. The first one is more powerful, while the second one has more of a cute vibe. I chose the first one, as I thought it will suit more with a Gothic witch.

After that I start feeling in more details in the sketch. Mostly I will focus on the anatomy of the character in this step.

The basic shapes are down. Now is the time to start thinking about the details. How the dress will finally look like, and also the chair. The chair is actually a second most important element of this illustration. I wan to add a lot of ornaments to it, so it does suit the Gothic style.

With a help of the outfit sketches I made before, I was able to quite easily sketch a design of a dress. I didn't chose any particular dress from there, but I mixed elements from all of them. That's why it was a good idea to make some research first with a complicated outfit like this one.

The chair design is also done now. The same like with the dress, first I made a research online to see what a gothic chair looks like. I was trying to figure out how the ornaments will look like.

Because the chair is symmetrical I only drew half of it, and then I copied and flipped the other part. This made the process a lot quicker.

Any proper with needs an animal companion, right? So now our witch has a little rat as her friend. But he also needs to be fashionable to suit his lady. That's why he got a little neck accessory.

And just like that the sketch is finished. Now there is also a little table with some snacks. The high tea cake stand adds to the aristocratic feel, that I wanted the character to have. There are few more magical elements, like the scroll or magically flying tea.

There is enough details to go to the next step, lineart.

Lineart

Let's summarize what happend here from the top.

 

The witch hat: I added some frills on the bottom of the hat to add the lolita touch. I think it looks very extravagant now.

 

The decorations on her chest: It might look complicated, but with the use of my sketch underneath, the sketches of the outfits and reference online it was not difficult to do. That's why sometimes is better to make all the hard work before, so while doing lineart you mostly just draw lines without having to think too much what to draw.

 

Bottom of the skirt: I used a bow brush from the assets store to make them quickly and easy. Unfortunately this brush has been deleted, so I can't share it with you.

 

Tights: I used a simple decoration brush, with a wavy line (from ruled line subtool) to create an easy decortion.

 

The little table: For the cloth I made a use of the lace designs I have shown you before.

 

Magic scroll: To make quick letters I used another brush from assets store.

Making the lineart was not hard, because I made all the difficult work before, when sketching and designing. Personally I like to have a very detailed sketch, so I don't have to design much while making lines. So if you get stuck while doing lineart, maybe think about making another sketch underneath.

 

I used a Real G-Pen to make all the lines.

Coloring

Now time to finish the illustration.

I start coloring by first creating a color block for each element. If you want to change the colors you can easily do that now with bucket tool.

 

In this step I also swapped carpet to magical circle using the brush shown below. Now the illustration looks a bit more mystical and magical.

Shadow and light

If you were worrying, that your illustrations looks a bit plain and not too good after adding colors, now it will change. Time to add shadows.

 

For adding shadows I use a multiply layer with around 50% opacity on top of the color layer. Pick any color you want to shadow with, I chose a dark pink, and fill in the shadows.

 

The illustration should look a lot better nearly straight away.

To make the picture pop even more I will make a use of light. With an airbrush I add glow to the candles and the flying teapot. Take a look at different type of layers to get a better effect. I used mostly a Vivid Light one.

 

Now I look were the light from those shining objects will meet with the character, the chair and the table. I make those areas lighter with the color, that is affected by. E.g. the magic items shine is pink, and the candles one is yellow.

Final result

Thank you for your time and I hope this tutorial will help you with creating your own gothic character!