Have you ever wanted to draw an abandoned place before but didn’t know how?

I’m going to show you how i go about drawing deserted places in this tutorial.

What kind of abandoned place?

First things first , we have to determine what kind of abandoned place you want to draw.

 

There could be a place where people left abruptly, leaving their belongings behind (like a zombie apocalypse for example) or there could be a place that people just left behind without taking care of the place anymore (an abandoned haunted house for exemple).

Let’s draw an abandoned room

We’re gomma start easy by drawing a simple abandoned room.

Here it will be a room where people left and left some belongings behind.

Im going to start with a simple sketch and add the value in black and white only for now.

Then im going to roughly paint the furniture and their shadows.

Note that we can tell people left abruptly here because they left valuables behind. It wouldn’t make sense for people to leave a TV behind right?

With storytelling you can give clues to the viewer about what happened, a child’s toy fell down while they were trying to escape?

I will then import a texture that i will add to the walls and ground of the room. This is optional but i also did a reverse gradient on it.

I will rely heavily on textures for this drawing to go faster but don’t overuse textures or your drawing will end up looking messy.

Using the transform tool , ill fit the texture to the wall while going along with the perspective.

I will then apply overlay mode on the texture and get rid of it’s color by reducing its saturation in the correction layers.

Instead of drawing it myself im using textures like this to represent mold which is usually caused by moisture in the air coupled with inadequate ventilation, mould can grow under suitable conditions in as little as a couple of weeks.

Which is why the walls of abandoned places look so decrepit.

I will add the textures to every wall and on the ground as well. You can also leave a bit on the furniture to show that they were affected as well, i recommended you use a mask to erase the texture where you want.

If you drew windows don’t forget to cut them out so you can draw the outside through it later.

Next you will create a new overlay layer on top and paint the colors you want on top of the greyscale.

Then i will paint green spots where i want there to be vegetation.

Just like mold , after a while plants will grow their way into this house.

I start detailing the plants and furniture and will add ceilings parts on the ground.

I will also quickly draw foliage on the outside of the house that you can see through the windows.

Indeed after not being taken care of , a house will start to fall apart and part of ceiling may fall due to humidity which is why i will add parts of it on the ground.

And that’s the end result.

Thus house is still remotely not that old otherwise there would be way more litter and foliage on the ground.

You can also add a multiply layer filled with dark blue on top to make it seem like nighttime.

Drawing an abandoned street

Here we’re gonna be drawing an abandoned city street who seemed to have been previously affected by a war of some sort.

 

I will start with a basic sketch of the street and this time I’ll be doing Lineart.

There is lots of trash on the ground since as i said here the context was war, so explosions might have occurred and caused the trash to flew out on the ground.

I am now done with the Lineart , i made the background buildings less detailed because of atmospheric perspective.

Note that here still, i drew a lot of foliage because this drawing takes place long after the “war” that occurred but let’s say you drew the street just a few days after the war there wouldn’t be as much vegetation.

Then i will fill the canvas with a color that reflects the mood I’m trying to convey.

Then I’ll add the base colors of the buildings, plants and ground.

When that’s done I’ll create a multiply layer on top of the base colors layer and paint the shadows.

This is optional but usually i like changing the Lineart’s color (here it was in blue) and put the Lineart’s layer in multiply mode.

This is also optional but sometimes i like adding a texture on top of the drawing to make it more grainy . I reduce the opacity of the texture layer so it’s not too strong.

And that’s the end result!

Drawing abandoned places where nature has taken over.

When a place has been abandoned for a really long time usually nature will take over the place. You will often see vines all over an abandoned building.

Here’s an example, this is a door in my neighborhood that has plants growing on it already. It’s not an abandoned place but since it’s not cleaned too often plants have time to grow on it so imagine if it were to be left untouched for a long period of time.

Using the clone stamp tool i tried to represent what it would look like after some time and it would probably be something like this.

With that being said let’s draw a place that was left in the forest and that hasn’t been maintained in a bit.

Im starting with a basic sketch again.

Again , here I’ll fill the canvas the color that will set the overall mood of the picture.

Here it’s a green color since the setting of the place is in a forest.

And then i will add the base colors .

If you’re not too sure about the lighting and color palette please use references.

I will start detailing the colors a bit more, as you can see the rocks on the ground along with almost everything around them will be covered in foam.

Here’s another example, this is a picture of my backyard, there is already vines and foam around even though people live here.

There’s already foam growing on the ground of my backyard even though it’s a small place so imagine how much there would be in a forest.

I will reduce the sketch layer’s opacity so i can focus more on the contrast and colors of the scene.

At some point i will merge the color layer with the sketch layer.

And after some more detailing and painting it is done.

Now let’s draw a place where nature has almost entirely over taken the architecture.

First paint the base colors, here since nature is the main element pf the painting, green will be the most prominent color.

I will start detailing the background elements first.

Now ill refine the foreground elements so that i can finish by detailing the plants.

I spent the most amount of time detailing the foliage. This is the end result!

As you can see after all of this time nature has grown on stairs to the point where the stairs are almost not visible anymore.

Sense of scale and atmosphere.

If you really wanna give off a feeling of loneliness in a painting to convey that the place you’re drawing is really abandoned, you can make use of atmosphere and sense of scale to make the viewer feel intimidated by said place.

So I’m gonna draw a simple painting that really focuses on the abandoned aspect of the place.

One again i am starting with a really simple sketch of a falling apart city.

I will use some assets to make two big buildings collapsed into each other indicating that obviously no one’s living in them.

I will repeat this with every building in the scene. Don’t forget to make your buildings look degraded. Here where the two buildings touch I drew it so it looks like some parts of the building fell due to the shock that was caused by the buildings crashing into each other.

Then add in the base colors of your scene. As said previously the atmosphere can play a big part in the painting so i will choose to keep neutral colors that deviate more towards cooler hues. There is no longer the warmth of a civilization.

With a multiply layer i will block in the main shadows of the scene. The most prominent one is the shadow casted on the ground by the two buildings in the foreground.

Then i will start detailing the elements in the background.

Then i will add a more dramatic light in the background, it’s shining especially on one building in the background. Maybe there’s something important there? You can guide the viewer’s eye this way.

And in the end I’ll add vegetation clinging to the main buildings to show that they have been like this for a while. And that’s the end result!

Thank you for reading!💖

Hope this helped you!

If you wanna see more of my art here’my Instagram account:

I’ll see you next time!