How To Draw Cute and Spooky Things For Halloween (Patreon)

Hello my beautiful flowers!

It’s Halloween at the end of this month and spooky season is well underway so I’ve made this handy drawing guide for drawing all sorts of cute and spooky things! I’m not traditionally a big halloween person but I do love magical and mystical things so I enjoy illustrating spooky themed illustrations.

I’ll show you the simple steps for drawing bats, a friendly ghost, a pumpkin and a skull, plus useful elements to embellish your illustrations like cobwebs and different types of sparkles (perfect for magical scenes!).

It’s quite a big guide, so let’s get into it! 🎃🦇

How To Draw Bats

Let’s start with bats. Their silhouette is such an iconic shape and can really easily make a forest or cottage scene feel much spookier. They seem scary but if you put a smiling face on them they become super cute!

Start with two long ovals to use as a guide for our bat shapes, and draw a large ‘v’ straight through the middle of them close to the top of each oval.

Following the line of the ‘v’ we just drew, trace from the body, to the edge of the ‘v’, then down again at an angle. Do this on both sides.

From the ends of the lines we just drew, connect back to the body with three curves joined together to form the wing shape.

Now give our bats some pointy ears and connect the wings down the bottom of the body.

I like to give my bats smiling faces to make them cute, but you could make yours scary if you like! I also like adding line details to the wings to give them some definition.

And that’s it, now you have two cute bat outlines!

If you’d like to add colour to your bats, you could use the outline that we just drew as a reference to draw them again in colour (this is what I do), or you could simply colour between the outlines! I like to draw mine in a dark grey with some love-hearts and sparkles around them to make them feel extra cute, and I also give them some rosy cheeks.

How To Draw A Cute Ghost

I think ghosts are the perfect spooky cute illustration because they can be getting up to all sorts of fun things! You can add accessories or clothes to them and put them in fun Halloween scenes.

As a guide, let’s start by drawing a tall semi-circle shape.

Then we can trace the top of that guide, stopping before we draw the bottom line.

Now let’s join the ends of the line we just drew by drawing a very wobbly curved line along the bottom. You can play around with how many curves are on your line to see what you like best.

Next, we can give our ghost some personality with a cute little face!

If you like, give them some arms so that they can be doing things. I’ve draw one arm down and one arm up in this example so that it looks like they’re waving.

And that’s it, now we have a very friendly ghost!

If you’d like to add colour to your ghost, you could use the outline that we just drew as a reference to draw them again in colour (this is what I do), or you could simply colour between the outlines! Since I want my ghost to be white, I’ve given them a circle of colour behind them as a background, then given them some rosy cheeks and sparkles around them.

How To Draw A Skull

A skull like this is perfect to add to a spooky scene, you could add them to a shelf in a witch’s house or on the floor in a spooky forest. It’s not a super realistic skull, but that’s why they look so cute!

Start by drawing a circle as a guide for the main part of the skull.

Trace around the guide circle, leaving a space at the bottom for the next step.

To join the two ends of the line we just drew, start at one end and draw down from the circle a little, then across to the other side with four bumpy ‘u’ shapes.

Now we can give them some big eyes and a triangle for the nose.

And that’s it, now we have a simple skull!

If you’d like to add colour to your skull, you could use the outline that we just drew as a reference to draw them again in colour (this is what I do), or you could simply colour between the outlines! Like the ghost, I want to draw this skull white so I added a circle of colour behind them. I gave them some rosy cheeks, and some sparkles and lines around them to embellish them a little.

How To Draw A Pumpkin

Nothing says ‘autumn’ like a nice orange pumpkin, and they’re a great Halloween image when they’re carved!

To get our pumpkin started, draw a nice big oval laying horizontally.

Using that oval as a guide, draw a new line on top that roughly follows the same shape except with a curved lump on the top and bottom.

Now let’s add the stalk to the top of the pumpkin, and I also like to add two curved lines either side of the middle to show the grooves of the pumpkin’s shape.

And of course it wouldn’t be a carved pumpkin without a face on it! You can draw this however you like, I drew mine quite traditionally with triangular eyes and nose and a big smile.

And that’s it, now we have a nice carved pumpkin!

If you’d like to add colour to your pumpkin, you could use the outline that we just drew as a reference to draw them again in colour (this is what I do), or you could simply colour between the outlines! I drew mine in a bright orange with a bit of shading where the grooves are and gave it some highlights as lines and circles around the top.

How To Draw A Cobweb

I know spiders get a bad reputation for being scary but cobwebs really are pretty spooky! They’re super simple to draw and look great in the corners of a spooky scene like a witch’s house or on an old bookcase.

Start by drawing three lines from a centre point. They don’t have to be perfectly even.

Now let’s add some more lines from the same point, and I think it looks best if they aren’t completely evenly spread and are slightly different lengths.

Starting just below the top point, draw a curve from one line to the next. Repeat this until you’ve drawn a curve between all of the lines and have reached where you started.

Now do the same thing but starting a little further down toward the centre point.

Keep doing this until you get close enough to the centre that you couldn’t fit another row. I drew four rows all up.

And that’s it, now we have a nice cobweb!

Drawing Magical Sparkles

I love drawing sparkles in my drawings and you can draw them in so many different ways! They can make a scene feel so magical, especially if you draw them around something like a witch or a bubbling cauldron.

I’ve drawn out some of the different types of starry elements that I use in my illustrations, and you can mix and match these in loads of ways to create a nice sparkly group.

A key thing is changing the sizes of the elements so that they aren’t all uniform, and don’t be afraid to put some close together and some further apart - when you look at the stars in the night sky they aren’t uniformly dispersed, sometimes they’re clustered together.

Colour Palette Ideas

And to finish off this Halloween guide I’ve put together a few spooky colour palettes to give you some inspiration for your illustrations. I like seeing deep purples and oranges, with a few autumn colours and maybe a pop of yellow to complement the purple.

Feel free to use them as they are or just as a starting point for your own palette! If you’d like to use these ones then you can download the palette, bring it into your digital drawing software and use the eyedropper tool to pick the colours you want.

I really enjoyed putting together this spooky guide, I hope it gives you some inspiration for your illustrations!

Enjoy! 🥰🎃🍂