Ponythread Learns to Draw! Together!

[Bakuel]

Bluh, I've been terrible about posting here lately. Some of that is because I'm far away from my tablet and scanner, and most of the rest is because I'm still wrestling with huge and obvious flaws in the current project.

Once I hammer those out and have something worth progressing on, I'll be sure to post it for second opinions, along with some long overdue comments on other folks' work.

Hope you come back soon!
Will keep the thread from becoming too stale, since I have more time for art these days.

Anyone serious about learning should go read these books ASAP.

I was looking for a good anatomy book, will read them all, thanks for the references!

Hi, drawing-branch-of-ponythread!
*snip*
Following discussion in the main thread, this pony is intended to represent the thread in an 'ask ponythread' tumblr. Could I ask for any further advice on improving this pony? (I've had quite a lot of help already in the IRC channel, but I thought I should post it here in case there's anything I've missed.)

The design is nice and the body's fine, but the main thing which could probably be improved is the head I would say.
The head seems a bit too wide, and the left eye should be smaller, since it's further away from the viewer. As it is now, both eyes are practically the same size. Compare it with Twilight's head in this.
I doodled over it to show you what I mean, it's rough and I messed up the size, but a picture is worth a thousand or something. Take all this with a bucket of salt. Eye, ear, and head size and so on would depend on your own personal pony style, it's just the lack of foreshortening with the eyes that is a bit jarring. If you fix the head I think the image would really improve a lot.
I hope this was helpful, rather then random blabbering.


Day 67-68, or "Waves and Lights".

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Things I learned,

It's all in the contrast(!), before in the picture I posted awhile back the colors were all dark and splotchy, there was light but it was subdued and closer to grayish. It made the whole picture look dirty and dangy. But by just following Diego Havoc's advice and lighting the city up, not only did the city look better, but the character's colors looked more distinctive, even if I did not change them that much at all, only playing around with the shadows. The base colors stayed the same. It's all in the contrast between the darkish characters and sky and the lit up city.

I lit up the city even more, by adding more lights on the water and I also added distant subdued lights to hint at distant buildings in the fog.

On the water I approached the waves like little mountains. Not sure if this is the correct way, but it is what it is.
Now all it needs is one last clean up round and that blasted fruit needs to be colored in some more.