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A step-by-step guide on how-to draw your own version of Cut Out + Keep's crafty superhero Crafterella!
A couple of you asked if we could make a tutorial for how-to draw Crafterella, so I thought I'd take a break from working on her latest comic to make a step-by-step guide illustrating my process. I've never been a great artist but Crafterella is so much fun to draw and I hope you'll find this tutorial helpful. Crafterella and I would both love to see your versions!

Posted by Cat Morley from London, United Kingdom • Published 5th June 2013 • See Cat Morley's 1145 projects »

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Step 1
The tools I use are pretty basic. Grab a sketch pad, eraser, 2B and 2H pencil. I like to use mechanical pencils as they stay nice and sharp, but any will do.

The hardest part of drawing is deciding what you're going to draw. Get an idea of Crafterella's rough pose in your head, the expression on her face and if she's holding any props. Keep this in mind as you draw.
Step 2
Start by drawing an oval, using the lightest 2H pencil, to represent Crafterella's head. It sometimes takes me a few tries to get the size just right. Once you've got her head just right, sketch ovals where her shoulders, elbows, hands and hips would be to get feel for the pose she'll be doing.
Step 3
Draw lines between the ovals to make sure her posture looks correct.
Step 4
Draw a curved line down the middle of the oval to reprsent the centre of Crafterella's face and sketch lines where her eyes, nose and mouth would be to get the position just right. Sketch the outline of two cat ears in roughly the right position on top of her head.
Step 5
Lightly pencil in the details of her face and redraw the outline of her face to look more human.
Step 6
Move on to her hair, lightly pencilling the strands of hair in around her ears.
Step 7
Move down to the lower body, sketching in her neck, the width of her arms and shape of her body.
Step 8
Erase the original ovals as you draw in her arms.
Step 9
Hands are always the trickiest part. Take your time working out how the hands are going to be positioned and where the wrist, knuckles, fingers and thumb are going to be.
Step 10
Finish up your initial sketch and then grab your 2B pencil. It won't look much like Crafterella at this point but we're past the hardest part.
Step 11
Using your dark pencil, start drawing Crafterella's eyes. I like to start with her eyes and work out from there because it starts to look more and more like her.
Step 12
Sketch her nose and eyebrows.
Step 13
Sketch her mouth.
Step 14
Draw the outline of her face and neck.
Step 15
Draw the strands of hair that frame her face.
Step 16
Add her ears and the rest of her hair.
Step 17
Start drawing her lower body.
Step 18
Work on her hands when you're feeling brave enough. Adding her gloves and claws at the end of her fingers.
Step 19
Finish drawing the body.
Step 20
Start erasing the light sketches from your initial drawing and use the 2H pencil to start shading her mask, hair, collar and gloves.
Step 21
Add any extra little details or props you like.
Step 22
When you're happy with your sketch, it's time to scan it in to your computer.
Step 23
Open up your drawing in your favourite software editing program. I'm going to use PhotoShop.
Step 24
The sketch never looks great when I scan it in, so we're going to adjust the levels. Use the highlight eyedropper to select the darkest grey of the paper and make it white.
Step 25
Pull up the white level arrow and pull down the dark level arrow until you have a nice black & white outline.
Step 26
Now Desaturate the image to remove any accidental colour.
Step 27
Duplicate this layer and rename it to Crafterella.
Step 28
Set the Crafterella layer to Multiply.
Step 29
Click back on the Background layer, Select All and fill with White.
Step 30
Create a new layer called Colors, set to Multiply and paint swatches of all the different colors you're going to use.
Step 31
Crate a new layer called Skin and use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to trace the outline of Crafterella's ears, face, shoulders, arms and legs.
Step 32
Fill this layer with her skin color.
Step 33
Create a new layer called Clothes and use the same technique to fill in her clothes with the correct colors.
Step 34
Create a new layer called Hair and fill in her hair with dark brown.
Step 35
On the same layer, select the highlights of her hair and fill in with a lighter brown.
Step 36
Add a new layer called Accessories and color in her accessories.
Step 37
Add a new layer called Details and colour in all of her little details - like her eyes, lips, mouth and craft tools.
Step 38
Keep going until she's colored in perfectly.
Step 39
Now for the fun part, we're going to add shading using the Burn brush. Pick a soft brush, set to burn Midtones at 15% and start shading her skin.
Step 40
The first strokes will be subtle but you can keep going over the same bits to add more and more depth.
Step 41
Work your way through each of the layers, burning and shading each.
Step 42
Finish up by using the eraser to clean up any mistakes or excess lines. You're all done!