Process

My Hero Academia, an anime about high school students training to become heroes, has an official Fantasy Alternate Universe where all the characters are various fantasy classes such as wizards, knights, barbarians, etc. The main character, Izuku Midoriyia (Deku), is an adventurer in the Fantasy AU and wears an outfit that looks very Hobbit like.

 

Because Deku is such an optimistic character (he wants to become a hero to make people smile!), I wanted to do an illustration of him that references the moment in the first Hobbit movie where Bilbo runs off and shouts “I’m going on an adventure!”

 

 

Because Hobbiton is very lush and naturalistic, I decided to paint this in watercolor. This was my first major watercolor illustration since high school five years ago, and I wanted to push myself to improve my environment painting skills and my watercolor technique.

For this illustration I chose to start with a rough sketch in my sketchbook to capture the composition and mood. I normally use thumbnails for this, but Deku’s outfit has many small details and I wanted to make sure that I didn’t miss any.

I took a photo of the sketch and took it into Clip Studio Paint, where I created a refined sketch. While I enjoy making my rough sketches and thumbnails in a sketchbook, I prefer refining my sketches digitally to make as many corrections as needed. Which as you can see, was a lot. This stage took me about three hours, probably due to agonizing a bit too much over all of Deku’s buttons and the rocks.

 

After I completed the refined sketch, I printed out digital blue lines onto Strathmore 300 Series watercolor paper and lined it using colored pencils. This allowed me to keep a soft, naturalistic mood while not clashing too much with Deku, who I chose to draw in an anime style. I originally intended to remove the blue lines in post, but they ended up being completely covered by the colored pencil.

 

 

This was my first wash of watercolor, using the Windsor and Newton Cotman Watercolors in the twelve pan travel palette. This was my first time using this brand for a detailed painting and I loved how vibrant the colors were, as well as how the whole palette played together to create a massive range of colors. The set doesn’t include greys or blacks so I painted the rocks using an ink wash.

 

 

The final illustration took me about 10-15 hours (though honestly I stopped counting after the sketch). I primarily built up values through glazing; I only used wet on wet blending for the sky. I added the text digitally in Photoshop using the font Hobbiton Brush.

 

 

This illustration was a major learning piece for me; I chose to do it because it had the magic combo of an idea I love and subject matter and techniques I don’t have much practice in. I expected the watercolor to be a struggle, but it turned out having five years of art experience under my belt, especially in acrylic and digital painting, led me to think about watercolors differently than when I painted in high school. In high school I primarily relied on wet on wet blending, but because of my experience in acrylic, I realized that I could create values and tints through glazing.

On the flip side, I learned two major lessons. The first is a major technical one: the Strathmore 300 watercolor paper is mediocre at best and warps with minor washes. The warping was a major issues when I needed to scan the painting; because of the warping, the middle of the painting was scanning very blury. I ended up having to tape the painting down on all sides with painters tape and weigh it down with a heavy book. After I realized how badly it warped, I went to my local art store and bought a pad of Arches cold press paper.

The other lesson I learned was to watch my values more carefully the next time I paint in watercolor. While the values aren’t terrible, I could’ve created better contrast if I hadn’t accidentally made the hill that the signpost is on as dark as it is, and if I’d made the rocks and the grass in front of the rocks darker. This would’ve helped direct the eye towards Deku, the focal point. I’m taking that as a lesson for next time; overall I’m really happy with how this turned out.