Halloween Greetings Card: Create a Customized Cartoon

Halloween greetings card customisation

halloween greetings card

The silly season is upon us! Halloween greetings cards are scarcely a ‘thing’ in Cape Town (though becoming more so as commercial interests ratchet up their pumpkin/bat/zombie paraphernalia sales each year), this is a tip you can used to create a customised greeting card for any occasion.

I like to play around sometimes with a mix of real and cartoon material, to mix and match a little, so I’m using my usual tools of Photoshop and a Wacom tablet, but you can just as easily use this technique with an iPad, Procreate and Apple Pencil, or an Android tablet and stylus, + a free app such as Sketchbook from Autodesk.

You can also just draw your own pumpkin from scratch by hand, and go for it with a marker and pastels.

How to create your Halloween greetings card

  1. Find a Creative Commons licensed pumpkin photo, or snap your own.
  2. Open a new document in your drawing software and paste your pumpkin photo in at whatever work for you.
  3. Sketch out your character. Make it intersect and overlap with the pumpkin in some way, so that the two are visually linked. The funnier your pose, the better.
  4. Add some distinctive Halloween-style (or other relevant theme) clothing.
  5. Add vibrant colour.

Voilà! Your Halloween greetings card is ready to print and share with whoever you please :).

Watch my step-by-step video lesson below for tips on how to make your colour glow and pop for maximum effect…

Interested in drawing your own cartoon characters from scratch??

If you’re wondering how to get started, you know where to find me ?