Create Your Own Demon Drawings!

We will create demon drawings in this lesson! Since a dark demon drawing is defined using a lot of shadows, you will need to depend on your imagination here to suggest its form!

Depending on your references, demons can come in all shapes and sizes. It may have a body of different animals, extra limbs, arranged in a symbolic shape, or a combination of these elements.

For my digital drawing, I am simply going with a standard demonic creature with demonic wings and body parts from other animals.

You may choose to do something different. Regardless, the steps to create demon drawings are the same no matter what your imagination can come up with!

1. Gesture drawing

First, start up a new layer on your digital canvas and begin a gesture drawing o f your creature. Think about the overall form.

What type of limbs will it have? What form will it take? Will it have scales or fur? Does it have wings? What pose will it be to shown to depict malevolent intent?

Answering a few of these questions on your own can really help with your gesture drawing.

Also, a few angular lines will help here and there to distinguish one part of the body from the other as you work on the outline.

Once you are done your gesture drawing, the next step is to create a base that you can work from. Create a new layer underneath your gesture sketch.

With a hard chalk brush set to 100% pressure, begin to fill in the shape of the gesture outline. Once that is done, merge the two layers together.

If done properly, you will get your gesture drawing filled with grey all on one layer. The purpose is to create a nice solid object where you can sculpt the details out from.

2. Blocking techniques for demon drawings

To make sure that you do not paint out of the solid shape created, make sure to preserve the transparency of the layer.

Using the chalk brush once more and setting it to the pressure sensitivity of your digital stylus, begin to block in areas of details.

Use your gesture lines to help guide you to where the shadows and light areas are.

For example, I have darkened the wings as I want to bring my demon to focus. As well, I put in shading to highlight the limbs. As for the mid section, it is mostly dark since no light can penetrate it.

Since we are dealing with a fantasy creature, the muscle groups itself are rough estimates of what I already know about animal and human forms.

Of course, the previous lessons on this site should have already given you a good understanding of muscles!

The ability to paint realistic and to observe the natural world is what this site emphasizes. You can see the benefit here when we work on fantasy creatures.

3. Adding details

Now that you have blocked in all the major areas of the body, the next step in making demon drawings would be to paint in details with a small digital brush.

The goal here is to sculpt out texture and details with a light color.

Switch between the various chalk brush sizes to get the right amount of details. You may want to also smudge with the chalk brush to get added textures.

When you are done with a lot of the major details, let your eyes float around the composition.

What looks right? What doesn’t look right? What can I improve on?

Adjust parts of the composition whenever necessary. For instance, readjusting the rock sizes in the foreground or increasing the size of the wings to make it look more ominous.

Moreover, don’t forget to erase parts of the gesture drawings so you can have a clean shape to finish off the details.

At this point, you may need to think of a background to add context to your demon drawing. Personally, I am thinking of a night scene where the moon shines brightly behind the creature.

This will lead to the last part of this lesson: lighting effects.

4. Creating dramatic lighting

So far, the demon drawing is looking fairly nice with the details painted in. However, it is still missing a light source to make it convincingly malevolent.

The best method to remedy it would be to create lighting that suggests the demon’s form as it inches closer to the foreground.

On a new layer, glaze over most of the front foreground with a black tone. Set this layer to 50% transparency as you do not want to cover up the details.

Gently erase out parts of this layer to reveal any lighted areas underneath from the demon you have drawn.

The goal here is to create the rim light caused by the light source being behind the creature. This particular effect outlines the demon and gives the entire composition a darker feel.

You may also want to return to your demon layer and repaint some of the light near the edges to increase the level of the rim light.

Keeping in mind where the light will create additional shadows, let your eyes wander as you adjust your composition.

Just make sure you keep a fine balance between dramatic lighting and compositional details.

With a little bit of practice, your demon drawing should come to life slowly but surely!

I hope you enjoy this lesson on how to draw a demon. Please let me know how you are doing by submitting your artworks to this site!

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