The most cursed crossover nobody asked for...

...but I had to do. But let's start from the beginning.

My relationship with "Boku no Hero Academia" is pretty complicated. To be honest, it's one of the series I'm interested into, but don't want to read/watch. I mean, I'm very much into fan works: fan fiction, various AUs, fan arts, just everything. I also like the lore and several characters (or rather fans' interpretations of said characters). However, the story itself isn't interesting enough for me to get involved. That's why I prefer sticking to fanon, while supplementing information about canon with other sources (all hail TV Tropes).

Of course, my little interest in the plot doesn't stop me from making my own stories and OCs. I even created a lovechild for my favourite ship.

Meet Reimi. Isn't she cute?

However, as you can judge from post's title, OCs aren't what I'm going to focus on now.

Several days ago I was procrastinating taking a break from university's stuff and somehow ended on "Midsommar's" subreddit. After spending almost whole evening scrolling through memes and edits I got a crazy idea: what would happen if "Midsommar" got mashed with "Boku no Hero Academia"? Of course, random concepts like that tend to be the most absorbing and, after some time of thinking about it, I decided to draw Tomura Shigaraki as Dani.

And this is what this post is going to be about: drawing. So fasten your seatbelts and enjoy the ride!

But I can't draw without music, can I?

I just needed an excuse to say Technolorgy is my latest musical obsession.

As always, I begin with head. This time the drawing was done solely digitally, so I didn't have to worry about scanning it and transferring to my laptop.

Drawing without any references is a big no-no for me, so I had to have my browser opened. I always peek at photos of characters and situations I'm currently working on. This time I wanted to do something inspired by "Midsommar's" ending.

And I needed a good picture of this dress.

Because most of Shiggy's body was meant to be hidden by flowers, I didn't have to focus on it that much.

I only had to determine how big the dress would be.

However, I had a problem with face. Horikoshi's style differs much from mine and I couldn't decide if I wanted to copy it (which would look weird with my lining and colouring) or draw the face as I usually do it. I finally settled somewhere in the middle.

But let's be honest: Tomura's eyes are strange in general.

I also did a rough sketch of hair, so it would be easier for me to draw them later.

Don't mind the line above the forehead, I will explain it later.

When the sketch was ready I could do the line art. I decided to do the colourful one. However, it always causes problems with choosing right colour. But there is one MyPaint's feature that is extremely helpful with it.

Meet Scratchpad!

Before doing the line art I had to choose the skin colour. I decided on something similar to the one from anime: very pale with slight, sickly yellow tint. The line art had to be similar shade, but much darker.

I needed a few trials.

After this I could do the proper line art.

Not that there was much lining to do.

The album ended in the middle of lining and I decided to change the mood a little.

I had to make a break after second track, because my crush sent me a song to try. I usually don't listen to other things during albums, but a song from crush is a song from crush, I couldn't help it.

For me, line art is often one of the longest parts of creating an art piece. Not this time.

The reason is obvious.

After that I could upload the file to Krita and colour it.

Then I went back to MyPaint to work on face.

That grin came out creepier than I planned.

From what I've notices, there are two main schools of drawing wide smiles: with all teeth contoured or only slightly highlighted. I think it's obvious which one I follow...

Artistic choice or laziness? Decide for yourself.

Then I drew the scars...

Fun fact: I think scars are sexy.

...and proceeded to hair. And this is where the real fun started!

First step: determine the colours and paint the base.

I'll be honest: it was horror. Tomura's hair are long and unkempt and with my way of drawing... See it for yourself.

If you focus, you will be able to hear me screaming profanities.

Especially while cleaning the picture.

Quick check, if everything is fine.

After finishing hair, I could start drawing flowers.

And this is what the line was for.

It helped me with positioning the flower crown.

Painting the crown was tiring. And then I glanced at the dress' outline...

...and realised how fucked I was.

As my ex-girlfriend summed it up: "You chose a character with million tiny scars on his face to dress him in million flowers. Congratulations on ambition".

I planned to paint all flowers manually, so yeah, I was ambitious...

 I was painting flowers in layers to make it easier. I managed to do three...

I made layers I wasn't working on semitransparent to avoid confusion.

...before going "oh, fuck it!" and switching to Krita. Why? Because then I could just copy and paste this shit!

It sped up the work a little.

This artwork made me question my own sanity.

No, really!

When I was satisfied with amount of flowers, I switched back to MyPaint to fill the gaps.

This time the active layer is semitransparent.

 I also had to arrange the layers a little bit to make them look nice.

I think I'm done with painting those little assholes flowers for at least a year...

The last layer was just some splashes of colour to cover empty places...

This dress will haunt me in my nightmares.

...and done!

Never. Again.

Of course, that wasn't the end: I still had million tiny scars to do!

Stop fucking staring at me!

I drew the scars with a pencil and used a lighter colour than the big ones, so they wouldn't blend. Then I chose another pencil, drew a second layer around eyes and on the neck...

...and made it semitransparent.

After that I only had to choose the background.

The dress is very vivid, so plain colour was fine.

And done! After exporting the image to PNG I only had to frame it and add a copyright note. You can notice I decided to abandon my "standard" note in favour of my DeviantArt account link. No particular reason, I just got fed up with the previous one.

Anyway, here is the finished piece!

The May Queen... King... Damn, you get the idea.

You can see and download the HD version on my DeviantArt. (I hope everything works, I still don't get how to use Eclipse...)

And please, don't ask me, why Shigaraki. To be honest, I have no bloody idea...




Image sources:
Dani and flowers: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8772262/mediaviewer/rm1884590593