It’s Halloween today! And hence my final painting along this theme. But oh my, what happened to Little One? Nope she has not been abducted by aliens, don’t worry! She was just doing a little experiment making a see-through Halloween costume intending to be a ghost. First covering herself with a big sheer white organza cloth, she then placed a few small LED flashlights on the back for some sparkle. And yes, all LED, she likes to save energy, what a sweet conscientious girl! And what a cute costume it turned out to be which of course I wanted to paint about.
Drawing Little One
On a square black background, I began with sketching Little One. A black background, as opposed to a white one, was already chosen so I would have an idea of what the painting would look like from the beginning in black. For the face and hair, I went for some Moist Wax from the FTOON Crayon range, add-ons purchased from the Creative Market. The neon pink outfit and whites of the eyes were painted with Light Pen from the Lights set (also add-on), and now look how it all pops out! So far so adorable.
Ghost Costume
Finding a suitable brush for the sheer organza cloth was not easy of course. After trying out a range of different brushes, I finally came across “Dilute Ghosted” which is among Jason’s Washes and Watercolor sets. The brush is obviously used for producing a washed-out translucent and sheer finish but it certainly worked perfectly for this purpose too. However, the effect only works when spread evenly and not overlapping each other, otherwise you end up with streaks. To avoid that, I carefully painted a layer with no overlapping, duplicated this layer and then directly placed it on top of the existing one as precisely as possible.
Lights and Sparkles
Once I was satisfied with the result, I merged the layers together and enlarged Little One on the screen. A series of brushes were then used for creating sparkles, and it was a matter of trial and error. For instance, Dotty Blush, Star Dust and Fine Grit from the Schill Brushes range were used. I used white for these brushes. Then I added some silver from the AJ Gold Rush brushes including Glitter Dust, then came back to some white with Bokeh from the Lights brushes. No particular sequence, as I worked back and forth among all the available brushes until I was happy with what I had.
Electrifying!
And now for the background! After a few tries with various effects, I eventually found one I liked. The Electricity 2 brush from the Lights range was perfect! A neon orange was selected to match the Halloween theme. However, applying it was quite a challenge as I wanted to make the composition balanced by adding not too much yet enough to have some effect. In the end, I made it. And here we have it, Little One donning her kawaii Halloween costume! I love how she just pops out from the firey background of lightning bolts. Too kawaii in fact to be even scary!
Once again, another fun play around with Procreate and further exploring various cool effects! Perfect when you want to create for holiday-themed paintings like Halloween. Whilst the lights and sparkles turned out amazing, I was also very pleased to discover how that sheer translucent texture for the organza cloth worked so well. One of the many advantages of digital art is consequently being able to make alterations easily. Speaking of which, even the image of Little One alone could be used as a template and recreated to another painting. Now that’s a great idea, let’s see what I can come up with soon!
My Kawaii Quarter 