Create Your Own Drawing of a Fairy!

Interested in drawing fairies? The drawing of a fairy in this lesson will let you look at a lot of digital tools in your art program that you can learn and benefit from in the long run.

Aside from the basic drawing brushes, you will learn about layer grouping to keep things organized as well as learning about layer effects to get the transparent wings.

To start things off, fairies are typically depicted with floral backgrounds. This means that this drawing of a fairy will benefit you as it gives you a few tips for drawing flora.

There are a lot of techniques involved here. But if you stay focused and think through each of these techniques, you will increase your skill set by leaps and bounds.

1. Gesture drawing and form

On a new layer, being a few gesture lines to start your drawing of a fairy. You gesture lines will include how the subject is posing as well as the type of background she is in.

For example, I am drawing my fairy sitting in a flower. It is nothing more than a quick sketch to tie in proportions and flow of the composition.

If you are still having troubles with proportions and the human form, take a step back and review previous lessons on this site or use a reference for help.

Make sure you choose what type of wings your fairy may have. The common type is the butterfly wings. Personally, I went with a leaf-shaped wing.

Once you are done creating the type of composition, the next step is to fill in the details.

2. Adding details

While the gesture sketch gives you an idea of the composition, you will need to think about your drawing of a fairy in layers and how to organize these layers.

For me, I have created a layer for the front flower petals, the fairy, the fairy’s outer wing, the fairy’s inner wing, the background petals, and the background itself.

In each of the layers, I would work on the details based on the gesture sketch (which is on another layer). Then, I would make my sketch on that particular layer a solid shape.

This is done with creating a new layer, filling it with 100% white in the shape of what I want (a wing, for example), and merging it with the detailed sketch.

As you can see, each of the different solid objects represents a different layer in my composition. This is to keep everything separated so I can paint on it later.

The solid layers will make sure that none of the background will show through the fairy or the flower.

3. Smudging and repainting

With the solid objects in place, the next phase is to preserve the transparency of each individual object layer. That means you can paint on that particular object without fear of going out of its boundaries.

With your chalk brush, paint in the little details of your fairy. Start with large shadows and gently work in the details by painting light on her.

Smudge in any details that are too sharp or out of place. You want to suggest form in some parts rather than paint in every little detail.

For the wings, start painting in a leaf patter (or butterfly pattern) and then gently smudge it into place. Then, switch to a smaller brush and create the veins of the wings.

For the flower, just gently glaze over the leaves with a large chalk brush to create depth. Switch back and forth between a dark tone and a light tone.

Lighter tones will indicate areas that are pushed outwards towards the viewer while darker tones represent indentation in the object.

Once you are satisfied with the results, it’s time to work on creating lighting effects to finish off your drawing of a fairy!

If you have kept all your layers separate, especially the wings, this part will be a piece of cake. But before that, let’s continue to work on your fairy.

4. Final details

This is an optional step. Start creating a clipping mask (otherwise, preserve the transparency and continue to paint on the layer if you digital software does not have this feature).

A clipping mask is a layer allows you to paint shadows and lighting without destroying the details you worked on hard on since it is on a top layer that conforms to the shape layer.

Anyway, start working on the light and shadow of your fairy. Keep in mind where you are positioning your light source. Paint where your light source is hitting your flower layers as well.

You can follow along or go your own route here anytime you need to. The whole point is to let you be creative.

For the wings, I have made it transparent by changing the entire layer from ‘normal’ to ‘overlay/soft light.’ You can also adjust the opacity of the layer as an alternative.

To spice things up and to add even more depth, I’ve added blades of grass at the foreground, on a separate layer, and blurred it into place.

In turn, it changes the focus from foreground to the middle ground where the fairy is.

Near the end, I’ve added little sparks of light (using the splatter option) to further increase that mystical feel.

Based on what I need to bring out the colors, I corrected the entire composition by placing additional light and dark shadows.

This is done with a large round brush and then painting in a large blob of light and shadows on an extra layer.

Finally, some correction can be done using contrasting and brightness options.

While that is a lot of work for drawing fairies, the end results should be stunning…not to mention that you have learned a whole bunch of new applications of new and existing tools.

I hope you enjoy this process for making this drawing of a fairy. I also am looking forward to your drawing so make sure to submit it to the gallery!

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