No Contest Creations

Well, I thought I’d do a quick ponysona update since my ability to draw has improved quite a bit even compared to last time. Then I ended up fighting with the eye shine, small portion of hair and scarf because I screwed up some lines during my tracework. And even now the left eye still bugs me a bit.

Anyway, pretty straight forward, sketch, scan and digitize process that I normally do. Adjusted the coat outline from the full on black to a dark grey, which I think looks much better. I think she’s looking a little girlier than in my previous renditions, which seems a little odd since I haven’t really changed her design. But maybe that’s just because I’ve got the proportions and overall style closer to that of the show’s mares now.

Oh and I came up with a more Equestrian name for her: Dusky Down (pretty forward, just black quill/feather, which has the simple double meaning of referring to either the writing instrument or her plumage). But since this is a ponysona in addition to an OC (with a personality that is starting to differ a bit from my own), Kuroi is probably going to stick around as an alternate reference for her outside of fanfics.

I went into this drawing not really knowing what I was going to do. Basically I started sketching and ended up with this pose, which is Twilight looking all smug and ready for battle, because she knows she can beat you in a magic duel. Just try it.

Anyway, more shading practice here. I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with the technique, although I still struggled a bit to determine how much to shade where for some of the trickier parts of the pose. The really funny thing about my shading thus far is, I went out and bought that tin of all the different pencils so I could have a full set of B pencils and have ended still just using my HB for 95% of stuff (2H when I just need a touch of shading).

This is my third submission for the DA Artist Training Grounds’ week 8 theme: draw a seasonal pony. Apparently I have a fixation on winter holidays, since I did that for all three drawings.

Anyway, this is actually a request from someone on Deviant Art to draw Luna and Celestia together. I thought about doing some heartwarming cuddling, but there’s already so much of that. Granted, the two of them goofing off isn’t a new concept either, but this was the better idea, so I rolled with it. I also decided to throw more wintery gear on them because I thought it would look cute. I was going to put booties on them too, but something in the back of my mind really liked the bare hooves for some reason, so I stuck with that.

I cheated a little bit with Celestia’s colours, or more particularly, with her hair. Because the whole thing is made of gradients. Even the outlines. And that really bugs me.

I originally wanted to do some more ridiculous stuff with their snow attacks, but that would have involved zooming out and I wanted the focus to be on them.

This is my second submission for the DA Artist Training Group’s week 8 theme: draw a seasonal pony.

Fewer panels this time, but the larger panels do give me more freedom to make the scenes look better. Despite being extremely tired, all the poses just worked out for me and this is probably some of the most dynamic stuff I’ve done with a comic page thus far. I think I did this in record speed too, clocking in just over 90 minutes for completion. I also tried going back to the more simplistic wings from the show and they don’t bug me quite as much anymore. I’m a little bit on the fence now, although I’ll likely go back to the more complex style.

Oh and that last panel where I have Applejack in the lumber jack hat and Dashie in the Santa hat features some of my favourites among expressions I’ve drawn to date.

This is a bit overly simplistic, but I’m already well over the time I set aside from this and I could probably spend hours reading tutorials. Sorry about the size. I worked with a bigger canvas this time and scaling down caused some of the lines to look pretty bad. Lesson learned, I guess.

Anyway, I really wanted to do this gag and submit it to ED for that 30 million hit celebration contest they have going on.

For those not in the know, the yellow unicorn is Cereal, white pegasus is Phoe and the box headed filly is Sethisto. Phoe is the only one with a somewhat less liquid ponysona, so I went with the mane style she has for her DA avatar and used a somewhat softer pink than when I drew her in a gala dress. For Cereal, I grabbed colour samples from a Cave Johnson image and used that for his hair, then just picked out a colour that went with that. For Sethisto, I thought about doing the same thing. Well, I did with the mane, I grabbed the colours from a photo of him. Then I arbitrarily decided he should be a pretty pink filly. So he is.

As for canon characters, Trixie is there to mock Sethisto and Twilight is there because she’s awesome.

This started as a quick sketch suggestion and then I promptly got carried away. Rarity seems to have gotten to her, although I guess Dashie doesn’t mind. Some odd quirks with this is the braided mane actually started to make Dashie look not quite like Dashie, although that was in part because I also had a more embarassed expression on her face. I changed that to something a little more arrogant for the final version. Saddles on pegasi also carry some… interesting logistical issues. And don’t ask what the earring is. I don’t know either, I was just fiddling and it sort of just happened and I decided it looked kind of nice.

This is something I may colour in the future.

This is my first submission for the DA Artist Training Group’s week 8 theme: draw a seasonal pony. I’ve been wanting to do a Winter Wrap Up Twilight drawing for a while now and this theme gave me a good excuse to actually go ahead and do that. As always, I was aiming to do something adorkable and my initial thought was to have her having a Pinkie Pie moment and bouncing around like a goof. But then I realized an even better Pinkie Pie moment was when she was rolling around in the grass in Feeling Pinkie Keen. So Twilight’s Pinkie Pie moment is her rolling around in the snow.

Something about her snout ended up looking off between the actual drawing and the scanning. I think it’s because I seem to have lost a little bit of my lighter shading in general when scanning it in. Oh, well. This is probably among my best, if not my best pencil work piece to date. Overall, everything just felt right. I’m particularly proud of how the shading on the saddle and the scarf turned out.

Running short on time tonight, so this is a speed sketch with speed detailing. Proportions are a little rough, but I think it still turned out okay. I did not intend this is not an Apple Sparkle shipping piece, although I’m sure some people will take that away from this anyway. I was rewatching Dragonshy the other day and totally realized I’d forgotten about this little tender moment. Applejack saves Twilight from a falling boulder and post-avalanche, Twilight thanks and nuzzles Applejack.

Well, I’m apparently incapable of just sitting down and doing a simple sketch of a pony these days. I sat down to do exactly that and yet somehow decided to draw what I have above. The angle for just about everything in this sketch was something I wasn’t used to at all, so this took me a while to get figured out. The snout, hind legs and the dynamics of the hair in particular messed me up. Despite the difficulty, I really love this pose and am quite happy with how it turned out. Happy enough that I decided I want to shade it, although I didn’t budget anywhere near enough time to do that tonight. Aside from that, the line sketch has some charm of its own and I wanted to save a copy of it before I started shading anyway, so I’m showing it off tonight.