how to draw a monster clip art loaded with amazing effects

Enjoy the pleasure of working on a monster clip art that is loaded with tiny details, textures, bright reflections and dark shadows. I will show you are to create a realistic cartoon character that looks visually appealing and that can be used to frighten everyone during Halloween night (or any other moment you can think of). Ready to be scared? Cool! Let's draw this fun monster now! :)

step 1 - working on the body and the head

First, we need to draw a few irregular lines to illustrate a few parts like the horns, the head, the eyes, the mouth, the body, the arms, the feet and the tail. Make sure all lines feel sketchy to end up with a really horrible and frightening monster. Of course, since we are working on a fictional character, you can add any other features you want to (more legs, more arms, three eyes ... the choice is yours).

step 2 - drawing more elements inside the monster clip art

Using more irregular lines, you can draw both eyebrows, the teeth and the pupils as shown below. You can also draw a short curved line below the mouth. Another long curved line is added on the chest and nails are created on the fingers and toes. Excellent! This cool character is getting uglier as we are progressing (which is a good thing).

step 3 - more lines to create relevant textures

Now the real fun begins! You can draw several short irregular lines inside the horns, on the forehead, around the eyes and in the middle of the face. More lines are added inside the patch found on the chest, on the arms, the legs and the tail. You can also draw small circular shapes to form pimples on the body and around the face. Cool! This monster clip art is really frightening now! :)

step 4 - Plain colors to bring the character to life

Monsters can be filled with any colors you can think of. In this case, the character is filled with a bright green color while the horns, the eyes, the teeth, the pimples, the nails and the patch are colored in yellow. The pupils are colored in red. As you can see below, most outlines and strokes are also colored in green to give more personality to this cartoon picture.

step 5 - color gradients to give more depth to the monster

Are you using a vector application? If so, you can add color gradients to this cartoon monster to create some depth and volume almost instantly. As you can see below, most elements found inside this drawing are darker on the bottom and brighter on top. This technique is perfect to reach a higher level of realism, but we need to add more effects to reach our ultimate goal!

step 6 - shadows to create a scarier monster!

To continue our quest for the perfect (and most frightening) cartoon monster, we need to draw more shadows manually using strong shapes filled with dark colors. All these new shapes must also be partially transparent so that we can end up with a satisfying result. 

These effects are added virtually everywhere. Using these shadows, we can increase the contrast of all lines found inside the horns or make the wrinkles on the forehead more realistic. All teeth are more visible using small shadows and stripes on the stomach are more genuine and real. All new shapes are shown below (with a temporary pink outline).

Once all pink outlines are removed (they were only used to help you identify the new shapes on the previous step), you should end up with something like this ...

step 7 - reflections and highlights to increase the level of realism

Another important addition to the character is the creation of highlights using new white shapes on areas that are mostly affected by the light source. Once again, all new elements must be partially transparent. These bright shapes are creating even more contrast inside the monster clip art giving more depth and volume to an illustration that was already pretty convincing.

Once all reflections and highlights are drawn, you should end up with this (which is the final version of our cartoon monster). Pretty cool, don't you think? :)

Draw more monsters and have fun!

Drawing monsters is definitely a fun way to improve your drawing abilities. You can use your imagination and your creativity to create weird creatures with several arms, large eyes, crazy colors and loaded with unusual textures.

If you are not sure where to start, you can definitely use more examples below. Learning to draw monsters has never been so fun! :)

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