The Japanese manga series “One-Punch Man” may not be the most popular anime series but it sure has some interesting characters and in this tutorial, I am going to teach you how to draw, Saitama, the superhero main character of One-Punch Man. The series is so named as Saitama can effortlessly defeat the villains and monsters in his world with just “one punch”.
This step by step tutorial will guide you through the whole process of drawing and coloring the superhero of the manga series. I have made it pretty easy so you will have no problem following it. We will start drawing a dummy, that will serve as a base over which we will draw our final sketch.
So, how to draw Saitama?
Get your pencils ready, below is a seven step tutorial on how to draw Saitama.
Step 1- Drawing the Torso
We will start by drawing the torso. For the torso, it is important that you define the curve line that divides the torso into two – the upper torso being the rib cage and the lower torso. Next, draw short vertical lines on the center of the torso to divide the torso into two equal vertical parts. We are drawing a full frontal view of Saitama and having two vertical parts of the torso will help put things into perspective. Remember to draw an ellipse on top of the torso and one on each side to indicate where the head and the arms will be placed respectively. Once you are done with the torso, proceed to draw the hips. I recommend drawing the crotch to look like some sort of male underwear
Step 2- Drawing the legs
Saitama is posed with his two legs pressed together with the left arm raised. Regarding the drawing of the legs, because of the pose of our character, both legs will be drawn from the same perspective fully frontal to the viewer.
• The Thighs
The thighs will be drawn as massive tubes, the wider part will be connected with the hips while the narrower part will be connected to the rest of the leg at the knee.
• The Knees
Draw ellipses frontal to the viewer to represent the kneecaps. This will help you better understand where the knees are placed.
• The calves and shins
As you can see in the image above, the calves and shins are visible on both legs. The shins will be drawn as concave curves starting from the knees and ending at the ankles, while the calves will be represented by curve lines with a descending line that connects to the ankle.
• The feet
Both feet will be drawn fully frontally using curve lines that will meet at the tip of the foot, where the toes ought to be, to form a triangular shape. I did not draw the toes because Saitama will be wearing his boots which will completely hide the toes and the feet as a whole.
Step 3- Drawing the arms
For the third step, we will draw the arms. Remember our character’s stance? While the left arm is placed stiffly beside the body, the left arm is raised in such a way that the biceps and triceps are placed at the same length as the shoulders and the forearms are extended upwards. The hands-on both arms will be drawn as clenched fists.
• The biceps and triceps
For the right arm, the triceps will be represented by one long curve line connecting the shoulder to the elbow. On the left arm, the triceps are barely visible as they are almost totally hidden behind the pectoral muscles. The biceps on both arms will be drawn as short curve lines from the shoulder followed by descending lines that connect with the elbow. Pay attention to how the upper arm of the right is drawn horizontally due to the position of the arm.
• The Forearms
The forearms will be drawn as tubes, just like the thighs only that they are smaller tubes. The wider part will be connected to the elbow while the smaller part will be connected to the wrists which connect the forearms to the hand. The left elbow will be placed at the same height as the floating ribs, on the sides of the torso while the left wrist will be aligned with the crotch.
• The hands
Both hands are clenched in a fist leaving the fingers and palms barely visible to the viewer. From the side view of the fists, the thumb and index finger are the most visible fingers, the other fingers will be drawn behind the index finger in succession. Use rectangles to represent the fingers.
Step 4- Drawing the Head
Next, we will draw the head. Remember the ellipse you drew on top of the ribcage? We will draw our character’s head on it. However, not before we draw the neck which the head will rest on. Simply draw a sphere, slightly flattened on both sides and pointed at the bottom. Next, we will draw two lines on the face, one vertical line and a horizontal line across it. While the vertical line will go across the center the horizontal line should be drawn a bit above the center of the sphere. The line will help indicate where the facial features like the eyes will be placed. The ears will be drawn on both sides of the head at the same height as the horizontal line, more or less.
If you wanna learn which are the Art supplies we use for drawing and painting you can visit the Recommended supplies and Recommended tablets sections.
Step 5- Drawing the Final Line Art
Now for the real fun, we will dress up our character like the One-Punch Man. For this step, we will are going to draw on top of the dummy. So that the outline of the dummy does not interfere with our final drawing, we will need to make the dummy less visible by erasing out some parts of the sketch. Erase enough to not interfere with the drawing but also leave enough to guide your drawing. For this step, it is important to stick close to references so that the outfit comes out very close to what our character actually wears.
• The Cape
The cape is actually easier to draw than you might imagine. We will draw the cape moving around and because of the lightness of the fabric (I am assuming the cape is not too heavy here), it is expected that the material will have some foldings on it. You can use long fluid lines to represent the foldings on the cape, starting from the shoulders and descending to the bottom of the cape.
• The body
Saitama will be dressed up in a jumpsuit with a belt around his waist. He will also be drawn with his gloves on to complete the attire. Drawing the head is also really easy as Saitama is bald, hence we will not have to draw hair or anything on his head.
Step 6- Painting the Base Colors
This step is really easy. Simply pick out the colors as on the image above and paint over each area with solid colors.
Step 7- Painting the Shadows
This is the last step and here, we will paint some shadows on our character. Shadows give a nice sensation of depth and volume and will make her character look more 3 dimensional. To avoid complicating the shading, I will recommend you to use a darker tone of the base color of the area you want to shade. To illustrate, in the image of Saitama above, I used a darker tone of yellow to shade the crotch and a darker tone of grey to shade the inside of the cape. Adding warmer tones to the local color is also a way to add lighting to the image but our character is already against a white background and additional illumination isn’t really necessary.
Conclusion
We have come to the end of our tutorial on how to draw Saitama. Now you can go ahead and try drawing your own version of the superhero and you can choose to draw him in any pose or attitude you like. Provided you follow my steps closely, I am positive you can achieve very similar results to mine.
If you are interested in more free step by step drawing tutorials similar to this one, feel free to visit the Drawing Tutorials section.
I hope this tutorial was useful
Artist: Ari Bakkas Pratama
Writer: Eseandre
