How to Draw a Haunted House

Starting with a basic house, you can easily turn your drawing into a spooky haunted house. Even if you don't think you draw well, you can incorporate some basic and simple elements into your picture to give it that creepy feeling you want.

Things You'll Need

• Pencils
• Crayons
• Paper
• Can

Instructions

1. Sketch the basic outline of your house with a light colored pencil. The base for your haunted house can be quite simple, such as an older-looking home with eaves and spooky windows. Most haunted houses appear dilapidated in some way, so consider drooping roofs, tall crooked stories or cracks in the walls.

2. Add windows to a simple box house to make a "face." Two upstairs window with a centered door can appear to be eyes and a nose in a style similar to the house made famous in the "Amityville Horror" movies. If your house looks older, then a one window per side on each floor will work.

3. Surround the house with spooky items. Gravestones are easy to draw, so create a small graveyard in your picture. Be sure to create a pathway from the cemetery to the house. Pumpkins, spider webs, bare trees, ghosts and bats also make good additions.

4. Draw a tree by simply creating a trunk with twisting lines as branches. Since the tree should be spooky, you don't have to add any leaves or be precise with your sketch. Make the tree black against your background.

5. Draw a full moon peering from behind the haunted house. The taller the house is, the easier this is to do, but make sure your moon is quite large to cast an eerie feeling. Trace around a can or other round-bottomed object to create a perfect circle for your moon.

6. Color in the elements of the haunted house after you have sketched the entire concept. You want to leave room for a white moon and ghosts, which don't require any color.

7. Add dark smoky clouds in the sky. Make the sky dark charcoal gray so you can add black clouds. With a black sky, you can't add extra details like bats and clouds.

8. Choose dark colors like black, gray and purple to set the mood. You can use pencil, chalk, crayons or whatever medium you have available.

9. Make the windows yellow, so that they glow, for a spooky look. Add pumpkin, cat or witch silhouettes in the window to add an extra creepy touch.

10. Add wood paneling and shingles to the house to give it an aged look. Use only slightly contrasting colors to create the additions. Brown and black, gray and black or even brown and gray work well together, creating a wood feeling.

Tips & Warnings

• Develop an entire story around your drawing. If you're having a hard time coming up with a concept, a book like "How To Draw Your Own Story: Haunted House" by Don Bolognese, which is available from Amazon, may help (see Resources below).

Resources

• "How To Draw Your Own Story: Haunted House" by Don Bolognese.