Step-by-step: Give your undead some oo-la-la

1 Don’t worry about the undead elements to begin with. Sketch out your character and concentrate on the pinup pose, costume and attitude. If the sketch is firmly in pin-up territory you can begin to layer on the undead cues with confidence. Even zombies can be playful, so I’ve chosen to show my undead girls having fun and smiling at the viewer.

2 Next focus on colour. Realistic-looking dead flesh may be unsettling, so consider more saturated tones instead. Cheerful colours will help to temper the horrific elements of your image and keep the painting light and fun. Dead flesh often turns blue, and green is associated with decay, so they seem like obvious colour choices to me.

3 Now I can start to have some fun and work in some more extreme elements to really establish that our pin- up is a zombie. I simply add a few small areas where the skin has been damaged and broken. I like the idea that these flesh eaters might be trying to chomp on each other, so I deliberately shape some to look like bite marks.