Explotions and Smoke 101

Explosions are hard to draw. Period. Why? because it’s hard to match it with the style you are using in your picture. At least that’s the problem I used to have.

-NOTE: click to see full images-

Whatever, I don’t care, how do I draw explosions?

Ok, first things first. Watch this video:

Why did I tell you to do that? Because when drawing, EVERYTHING starts from observation. I tell you what I see here. I see that if I want to draw a starting explosion, there will be more light than smoke, and it will be focused in the center. A normal explosion will have a lot of smoke, but shinny clouds where the explosion started, and in the middle dark clouds and shinny ones will mix. Add one or two flying objects that where shoot from the middle, and you’ll be done. Late explosions are mostly dark clouds of smoke and one or two flying things, or clouds with said shape.

Yah, yah, how do I get started already?

Draw a circle and draw some lines coming out from the center of it. That will be your basic explosion. The lines represent direction that smoke will take, feel free to draw in whatever direction you want.

And theeeeen?

Clouds. I’m quite sure you know how to draw them. But they don’t look good in the explosion, do they?  When I draw the clouds (of smoke), I do it as I would normally do, and then make them a bit shaky. That will make them look more random. Random? Well, yeah, you never know how explosion-clouds will come out, do you? DO YOU?

Well, what if the wind is blowing hard, MH?

Drawing clouds is quite easy, but I suggest you practice a bit before applying it to any of your pics, so you can adapt them to your style. When drawing them, take in mind the wind. Clouds come from around the explosion and from the explosion. If you want to draw the clouds near, you’ll have to make them small at first, bigger at the end (it’s proportional to the distance, you see)

What about the flying things?

I draw a random mass of cloud following it, like in the picture:

If you want to paint them, you can do as I did, and use them as a light source (because of the heat) or not! Look at the explosion of the car, stuff fly away, but they all look black. So yeah.

And that’s pretty much all I know about explosions. Hope it was helpful! And remember, with explosions, you can do pretty much anything and they will look ok. -See ya soon!