Himiko Toga – Fanart
Disclaimer: Just a heads up, I’m still a beginner artist and I do a lot of research to make sure the information I share is accurate. But since I’m not a professional yet, I might be slightly off on some things. Feel free to let me know in the comments if there’s anything I could improve! This blog post is still a work in progress.
As a huge fan of My Hero Academia, I wanted to have some fun and create a fanart piece for Himiko Toga. I did this while I was studying the Loomis head, but I got extreemly bored with it. So to balance study sessions with fun, I do fanart. Below is what I drew:
The Process
Below you can see the whole raw footage process I went through when drawing Himiko if you are more of a visual learner.
- This drawing was highly observational. (As I presume most fanart are) It was around 70-80% of just looking and seeing relationships between different elements of the drawing.
- I started of trying my best to draw lightly, this is to sketch in the basic important elements of the portrait.
- So I started off with drawing in the basic head shape, then the basic facial features, none were perfect at this stage, and even after a slight refinement of these elements, I kept in my mind that this was still not finalised.
- I highly recommend putting each element of the face on different layers. This is something I dont do enough and need to improve on. Its not only good for managing these elements. E.g. if the eyes are not in the correct position or size, it allows you to select that layer to make adjustments, its also great for painting in later stages.
- A key element of Himiko’s Toga’s design is her hair, she has bangs and flicks, so I made sure to spend alot of time on skectching in the basics of her hair. I spent A LOT of time looking at the reference image of Himiko I had. I would put my pen upto the image on my 2nd monitor and see the angles and placement of hair elements.
Challenges I faced:
Throughout this fanart piece I faced alot of challenges, and in hindsight I should have spent an hour or two more in ensuring that the foundations of this drawing was in place correctly, before I went onto painting. It was not. It looks close enough to Himiko, but I believe I could have done better. In reflection on things I could have improved:
- Once I started painting, I noticed that on the reference image, her neck was much skinner than what I had on my image. But because of my ear placement was off, it made it hard to fix.
- Because the jaw & neck connect into the ear, I had trouble making her neck smaller. In the reference image her ear showed, with a slight bit hidden by her bang. BUT I wasnt sure how much to make it close into the head. If I had drawn in the ear and neck properly first it wouldve elevated the artwork.
- Another issue I faced is that once I got into the painting, in the 2nd refinement sketch I did of her, I adjusted the eye positions, and I made it in a worse place than what it should have been. Her eyes in the painting are too close to the center of the face so it looks a bit off.
- Because i started painting the face, I had a base layer and shading for the head, but this meant I couldnt adjust the eye position as it would affect the rest.
Key Takeaway:
- Draw lightly on paper, or lower opacity on the layer in the program.
- Spend a LOT of time in the begining stages. Make sure all proportional elements are correct.
- Look for releationships between elements. Something I noticed after refining stage for Himiko Toga was that the bun on the side of the head should’ve been closer to her head. So I noticed that if we duplicated her bun to the right, it would match upto her 2nd bang, something which mine did not. So this was something good to learn.
- Spend a lot (70-80%) of the time just looking at the reference. Analyse, and then reproduce on the paper. As long as you have good line quality (which can be done very quickly by just drawing hundreds of lines, circles, and boxes everyday), anyone can draw fanart like Himiko Toga.
- Highly recommend recording your artworks, good to analyse them, you can come back to them in the future and look at what you know now, that you can apply and change.
- HAVE FUN! If you arent enjoying what you are drawing then stop. Take a break. I draw for long periods, sometimes 3-4 hours on these Fanarts, but I make sure I enjoy it. If i dont ill just stop. Go and make some Tea (I’m British and we love our tea) and relax. Normally I spend 30 mins on a break, but if needed ill take 1-2hours off. Keep a timer for this so you dont forget to get back to your artwork.
If you are struggling with drawing the head or the facial features feel free to look at these blogs below as it should aid you in developing your drawing skills: