We Are the Color Symphony: Learn to Draw Ponies Thread

[londonarbuckleAND SOMEDAY YOU WILL BUCK LIKE I BUCK.]

I made my first sincere attempt at drawing a pony the other day, and showed it to IRC so I guess I'll show it here too.





I tried to ink it for fun but I screwed it up too many times and gave up. I adhered pretty closely to one of the guides in the OP, even though it was a guide for assembling it in Photoshop or something it had the best example of all the different body part shapes I could find.

Let me reiterate,

edit: oh god pagebreak why

[GrimI'M THE WORLD CHAMP BETCHA CAN'T BEAT MEBALL SO HARD LITTLE GIRLS WANT A PONY]

Trying to really for reals get a handle on legs now. Will probably have more pages like this coming:

I'm not sure if it's the wires or the actual mold of the legs that I'm screwing up more, but I tend to think it's the latter because it usually looks fine when I lay out just the wires and hoof caps.

I still can't seem to get back legs to look right from any perspective that isn't from their side. The set in the lower right is supposed to be the pony's front (as when standing) but you can barely tell; I just don't seem to be able to make thighs pop out the correct way.

(By the way, someone with Actual Art Abilities made their version of that last pony I posted. )

[In West FillydelphiaSCHWEIIIN]

Little hoofies

On that coloured picture of Rainbow Dash, I think the butt looks rather large for a pony. The top portion of the leg (which we've been calling the drumstick) is halfway down the whole leg in your drawings. That top part needs to be much shorter in proportion to the whole leg. Also, the lump of the hock joints look a bit far over, which make it seem as though the back legs are twisted, such that the front of the hoof faces our left. The angle of the floor in this picture doesn't match the angle of the stomach or back. It looks like the back legs are being shrunk between the high floor and the big butt.

One area for improvement in this is the roundness of the back and butt. I think the pony's back left leg needs to come further back on the guideline ball (or maybe the ball needs to come forward?). I think the curvature of the butt and back doesn't need to follow the guideline ball exactly. Instead the flesh deviates a little from the exact circle to make a flank shape. I kinda imagine drumstick hips that part intersect the ball (all in 3D). I'm talking mainly about the top of that back/butt here. Also, the front legs connect a little high on the front guide ball, or maybe that ball is low, all in relativity.

First sincere attempt

Welcome to the world of drawing ponies I see you've used balls as a guideline, and you managed to get the back legs to face the right way. I think you need more guidelines, such as ones to help you place and size the eyes as well as get a feel for the construction of the legs. Here's a post from a subreddit. It has many links that I have found useful.

Note: I cannot guarantee that any of the replies to these posts (in their comment sections) would be safe for this forum. The subreddit which contains these posts does allow unsavoury works, but any posts linked from this post do not contain any objectionable materials in the OP. Here's the link.

AUGH

Your works are very honest. Where I will draw thousands of lines, erase away and repeat until it looks right; you draw very confident single lines and show us. It's good, as it allows us to see where you can improve.

I'll start with the picture you marked with a "?" The problem isn't all at the elbow that you marked. The issue is at the very front of the hoof. Those three lines which mark the front, the hoof, and the line going from the back into the "wrist." They all make it look like the hoof is coming toward us in a way which is twisting the whole thing counter clockwise about the joint. If this is the angle of the hoof, then the top of the joint needs to be brought forward rather than the bottom being brought back or flattened. Though, looking at the other hoof, I think you had intended to make this leg look more straight than twisted. In which case, those three lines need to be re worked.

When it comes to the butt facing pictures you marked with "AUGH", you're making the joints look backwards. The hock joint would be sticking out over the drumstick, and not the other way around.

[GrimI'M THE WORLD CHAMP BETCHA CAN'T BEAT MEBALL SO HARD LITTLE GIRLS WANT A PONY]

Your works are very honest. Where I will draw thousands of lines, erase away and repeat until it looks right; you draw very confident single lines and show us. It's good, as it allows us to see where you can improve.

What you're not seeing are the hundreds of failed lines that get eliminated by undo. I'm not sure why, but without even thinking about it, I went from scribbly lines + eraser to just mashing the undo key on each stroke until it looks good. I'm not sure if that's a better way to practice, but it seems much quicker and less hassling because I rarely ever have to use the erase tool unless I'm cleaning up.

(I'm actually about to just map Ctrl+Z to L1 on my PS3 controller. Gives more left arm freedom than the keyboard. )

When it comes to the butt facing pictures you marked with "AUGH", you're making the joints look backwards. The hock joint would be sticking out over the drumstick, and not the other way around.

Only the left one is supposed to be turned around, and the drumsticks there would be in back if I erased where the overlap is. What I'm bugged about is that they both look really 2D even if every individual part is overlapping correctly.

I was doodling a bit ago and spawned this freakish thing:

A lot of things are insanely off but I like the gesture I got here. Thinking of trying to refine and color; sounds like it could be fun.

[weedgoku]

Grim: I really like the gesture of that pic too. The spiky lines for wings, mane, tail and especially mouth just all look great everywhere and it's a drawing style worth developing further.
If you turn your head upside-down or rotate the pic then Derpy's head looks a bit weird. Yet it looks just fine the right way round though.

I did a whole bunch of practice sketches the other day. Anyone have feedback about stuff I missed and what I still need to improve on?

[Headless Horse]

Grim, those long sweeping lines are badass. Sure, they feel less controlled, and you have to redo them a lot, but you can just feel how much more energy they have, can't you? A drawing can hardly help but feel "animated" when you construct it out of those kinds of lines. Accuracy can come later, but if you can instill that sort of energy of movement into your muscle memory, the stuff you come up with will almost inevitably be a lot more vibrant and emotional than it would otherwise have been.


Weedgoku, those are all very good construction-wise. It's good that you're working on proportions, because I think that's where your main area of focus ought to be—you've got the technique for building up the character from basic shapes working well, and now it's just a matter of getting all the right shapes together in the right sizes. A lot of that comes with practice and feel. Ultimately you shouldn't have to be thinking in terms of how many "heads" tall someone is or what the right ratio of leg length to head size is or whatever; you should be able to step back from the drawing, look at it from a high altitude, and immediately tell which pieces are fitting into place the right way.

One reason I think I can tell you (and others too) may be focusing too hard on individual parts is the body shape. Don't fixate too hard on the idea of the two spheres of the body being important physical masses. They're really just there in the tutorials as aids for placement and proportion, and if you treat them as individually too important, you risk ending up with a sort of "dumbbell" shape. What you ultimately want to do with the body is think of it like a single "bean" shape:



This 1) helps to keep the waist from "pinching" due to considering it less important than the end spheres;
2) gives it that characteristic "droop" in the middle that's an important part of the body construction—it's there in real horses and humans and anything with a spine, because the spine droops in the middle there, and the body cavity follows the curve and hangs in the middle like a bag suspended from two poles;
3) allows you to keep the body in proportion with the head more easily (the head and body should be roughly equal in volume—and if you use two spheres for the body you risk the two of them plus the middle section adding up to a way bigger shape than the head). Proper pony proportions involve a head that's so big it will almost invariably feel wrong to you when you're drawing it (intuitively you know that a head is way smaller than a body in real life!), but this is where cartoon stylization comes in. Cartoons can get away with having freakishly huge heads and make it feel more "natural" than real-life proportions.


Edit: THE WEATHERLY GUIDE

[IsaakEquus Ludens :3]

Grim, those long sweeping lines are badass. Sure, they feel less controlled, and you have to redo them a lot, but you can just feel how much more energy they have, can't you? A drawing can hardly help but feel "animated" when you construct it out of those kinds of lines. Accuracy can come later, but if you can instill that sort of energy of movement into your muscle memory, the stuff you come up with will almost inevitably be a lot more vibrant and emotional than it would otherwise have been.

I've been looking at the animated storyboards here at the studio, most of it is scribbles and simple lines without any colour, but they're so alive with expression that it doesn't even matter.
It actually makes it more evocative as you have to fill in the blanks yourself.

Anyhow, I know this is the Draw a Pony thread, but could you give some feedback on environments as well?



I've been practicing landscapes in Photoshop as part of my Pony animation project and this is where I'm at so far.

[In West FillydelphiaSCHWEIIIN]

I don't think I could draw with sweeping lines. I need to be sketchy as fuck just for the line to be complete. Yes, I do draw with my arm and not my wrist, it's not that.

These past few pictures, I think I've gotten worse at drawing.

http://imgur.com/a/RkTJ1

everything has just fallen apart. Pinning the wing right on the spine, like that even makes sense?

Isaak: Your use of colour is great. The shadow for the central cloud is too far to our left. Considering that the sun is the source of the the light, the shadow for that cloud would be projected further ahead of the cloud and to our right (or off the page). Also, the three foreground clouds seem a little low and flat.

I think that the peak of the mountain's shadow would also be skewed more to our right.

[weedgoku]

IWF you're much better at expression and emotion than you think you are, those pics of Fluttershy are extremely fluttershy indeed and the second pic also has wonderful emotion and facial expression. It makes the anatomy errors a lot less significant imo. All you need at this point is practicing the physical technique of drawing in a long, sweeping line.

Isaak: Seconding what others have said about the shadows because at first I thought the clouds and mountain were supposed to be reflecting instead of casting shadow. I like the cloud that furthest back because it has an appropriate amount of detail for its distance but the others should be redone. That highest one would suit being moved further back and the two in the middle I would redo entirely to try to make them more 3D.

Headless Horse, holy crap thank you so much. I have been missing something really fundamental about cartooning, and you've simultaneously opened my eyes to it and showed me how to fix it. Looking back at my sketches with this in mind I now think the tired/sleeping pony in #3 is the best out of the whole lot since I think it captured the mood I intended it to.

[In West FillydelphiaSCHWEIIIN]

It's possible that we are looking at a body of water in Isaak's drawing, in which case I have to say that it's not obvious. Water at sunset needs to dazzle (or any likewise reflective surface).

Trust me when I say that I am dependent upon the ambiguity that my fuzzy lines give to make my pictures seem feasible. I might draw something with few lines to show you just how awful my penwork is. (if I ever get into inking, I think I'll take the vector tool based approach)

[IsaakEquus Ludens :3]

Thanks a bunch for the feedback! I'm testing the waters here, seeing what kind of look and level of detail is appropriate for the animation and this really helps!

I'll work this into my next stab at it, though I might go for a completely different look. I went for a painterly feel here, which may or may not work for animation.

[In West FillydelphiaSCHWEIIIN]

I figured I'd make one of my previous drawings transparent and then draw a less lined version on top...



What was that I read earlier?



Except someone making a stuffed toy of Fluttershy probably wouldn't stitch her front right arm so high up

Sure, I know it needs to be much lower, and I could move it. My problem is that it means that something was wrong with the process somewhere. Getting the arms in the right damn place should be almost sorted at the point of making an undersketch. My lack of the understanding for pony anatomy goes much deeper than creating an image that looks like stuffed toys. Also everything about the mane and eyes.

[PerrydottoHow is a pegasus like a writing desk?]

Anyone here using Paint Tool Sai?
I've seen a feature on livestreams a couple of times but nobody told me what it was, so I'll just go ahead and ask here.
Somehow, people managed to select and fill an area with just a few clicks. The area would turn a different color, for example green, and then could be filled with the desired tone.
I doubt it was the wand tool or the lasso tool and I'm stumped besides that. I'm coming from basic photo editing with GIMP and Paint.NET and don't know a thing about Sai yet, so help with my dumb question is greatly appreciated!

[In West FillydelphiaSCHWEIIIN]

Anyone here using Paint Tool Sai?
I've seen a feature on livestreams a couple of times but nobody told me what it was, so I'll just go ahead and ask here.
Somehow, people managed to select and fill an area with just a few clicks. The area would turn a different color, for example green, and then could be filled with the desired tone.
I doubt it was the wand tool or the lasso tool and I'm stumped besides that. I'm coming from basic photo editing with GIMP and Paint.NET and don't know a thing about Sai yet, so help with my dumb question is greatly appreciated!

I use paint tool for most of my work. It's a very nice painting software which really speaks to artists using tablets who want to draw in a traditional way. It can emulate many drawing tools (watercolour, indian ink, regular pen, acrylic, airbrush...), canvas textures and different shaped/textured brushes. One thing it is known for is its stabilisation, I find that its stabiliser works very well to mitigate the bumps from my unsteady hand. SAI certainly interacts with tablets very well, offering what I think could be its own driver (I haven't looked into how it works). It allows you to remap the buttons on your stylus for different purposes, only when using the program (rather than having to mess with the tablet's own bindings). It supports pressure difference in tablet use, and most tools can be set to alter certain properties of the stroke by pressure (usually size and density).

I can't think of any special selection tools it offers other than the typical magic wand and the lasso. Its magic wand (and bucket tool) has adjustable sensitivity and can be set to detect for transparency or colour difference, either only on the working layer, or on the whole document. I find that messing with those settings can make it much less temperamental than other wand tools.

Two things: SAI doesn't support a transparent background. SAI doesn't have any vectoring tools (why would it?).

[PerrydottoHow is a pegasus like a writing desk?]

Okay, thank you very much! Maybe what I saw was indeed the wand tool and I'm just a noob.
I'll try fiddling around with the wand and see how it goes!

And I found an easy fix for the "no transparent background" thing - Export it as .psd, open in GIMP, save. Bizzam!

[GrimI'M THE WORLD CHAMP BETCHA CAN'T BEAT MEBALL SO HARD LITTLE GIRLS WANT A PONY]

Weedgoku: In addition to what HH beat me to:

I think if you rely on two spheres like I do, it might help to make the front circle around half the size of back one and make sure the two are at least touching from any perspective. That way when you hang the front legs on, they're much more likely to be near enough to the back ones. (Just look at how close together they are when on-model.) The two circles will look like a pear at first, but once you make the neck flow smoothly into the pony's back circle you should easily end up with a good bean shape.

A thing to get to know is that FiM ponies are compact, taller than they are wide but managing a pretty short neck. (despite real ponies being almost the opposite) Their head and legs are huge, giving them something like 70-80% of their height, while their body is just the little bean those sprout from. You could make it much smaller than it's supposed to be and it'd still look fine, but there's not a lot of room to make it bigger. (This seems to be a rule for almost everything that serves as a connecting point in cartoons. We tend to interpret it as huge heads/hands/feet and whatever else, but that doesn't often hold up when you compare a cartoon character to the environment they inhabit.)

IWF: You seem to have the same problem I did at one time, getting too caught up in the end quality instead of how well you're doing on first pass. I can't entirely tell, but it looks like your first sketches are being made by drawing out certain body parts without any guide lines to help plan and mold things. Your black lines also seem to follow them pretty rigidly which makes me think they're treated as just a first attempt with one layer of improvement. As tempting as it is, cleaning all those overlapping lines from a sketch and fixing mistakes isn't worth the time it takes. There's only so much you can enhance by making corrections as opposed to actual redrawing and refining.

What I suggest is to force yourself to sketch a lot of different poses and things very quickly, allowing your mistakes to just be there. You won't actually be making a lot more this way, just leaving the ones you did. This is efficient practice because you don't get better by making a correction but the mistake itself. There's no need to make the individual strokes very fast or in one sweep, and you don't want to be 100% careless, but up your pace as much as you can. Undo if you want to retry strokes, but don't touch the eraser. Your only choice should be to start anew or keep going, because you want to be drawing the whole time and not fixing or tracing. (Silly Tetris Analogy #2: You can't avoid losing, but score as many lines as you can before the playing field becomes an unworkable mess.)

Preachy conjecture stuff out of the way, I put my all into refining that last pose, and by that I mean I just rebuilt it more carefully:

I am at my wits' end with those front legs. I tried putting them everywhere before I realized they absolutely couldn't be flat (they would just look twisted or dislocated) and this was the best I managed thereafter. I looked at all kinds of guides and references but joints + depth = This has been a very long-running issue with me and art. I can pound a specific configuration of 3D shapes into my head until it translates to 2D, but move or reshape something even slightly and it's back to feeling around in the dark for where the creases and stuff will make sense. Imaginary depth is a big bad bastard.

[QuantaThe heroine of fabulosity is here!]

I was doodling a bit ago and spawned this freakish thing:

It looks like a centipede. It uses the image of Derpy to lure in unsuspecting prey.

[In West FillydelphiaSCHWEIIIN]

Yeah, I often get fed up of this whole process. I hear Headless Horse keep saying it's "worth it" and I'm asking myself "when will it be?" It's always soon and never here. Then I look back on the first time I called it soon, and figure one thing: if I knew then that it would take until at least now, I wouldn't have called it "soon." So I'll start calling it eventually, possibly or even uncertainly.

I do use guidelines to position the features of the body. My issue is with adapting my guidelines to the pose I have imagined. I just can't put on the page what I have in my mind, and what I have in my mind is probably flawed anyway. Everything looks completely different, and I often scrap my ideas just to make it look plausible. What if I told you that one of those pictures of Fluttershy was originally going to be a picture of Rainbow Dash sneaking around?

I know what would help. Going back to square one and learning how to draw all over again. There'll be something I missed last time: a piece in the guidelines I forgot, or a shortcut I unknowingly started taking which snowballed into a consistent mistake.

I can see what you mean about results, but I just hate my mistakes. Somehow an ugly drawing that I did makes me feel equally as horrible.

[PerrydottoHow is a pegasus like a writing desk?]

Sketched Shining and Twily together. Something about it bugs me a lot but I can't put my finger on it. Anyone care to help?

[In West FillydelphiaSCHWEIIIN]

Anyone care to help?

The picture is pretty much better than anything I could ever draw. I'll say a few things I noticed. Shining's muzzle looks a bit thick, but that could be a stylistic thing. Shining's far leg looks like it's connected ever so slightly high. What I mean is, it looks like his imaginary shoulder (obscured by the body) would be a little high up and possibly forward. I think that needs to come down and in a little.

Twilight's neck seems to be a little long. It might be that the legs are connected a bit far back, but it could instead be something about the neck (the head may need to come down, too). The line separating Twilight's jaw from her neck shouldn't really go all the way through the neck and to the back of the head, it makes it look like she's wearing a turtle necked top. Twilight's far back leg looks close to her other one, making the imaginary hips seem short. I think a leg that was not just in the same position as the other leg would make this more interesting. Also, Twilight's hooves look a bit wide (like a stretched shirt kind of wide).

If you don't draw all of your obscured details (tops of back legs, ears behind hair, hair that's behind the head) it's worth thinking about. You just erase the obscured part later, but drawing and positioning it is good practise.

[weedgoku]

Yeah, I often get fed up of this whole process. I hear Headless Horse keep saying it's "worth it" and I'm asking myself "when will it be?" It's always soon and never here. Then I look back on the first time I called it soon, and figure one thing: if I knew then that it would take until at least now, I wouldn't have called it "soon." So I'll start calling it eventually, possibly or even uncertainly.

A while back I think it was Headless Horse who posted that giant compilation of pony sketches from one artist showing their improvement over a period of 1-2 years. At first I was demoralised by that because my level of quality was barely as good as the beginning of that compilation, but I decided to start my own compilation and it's quite inspirational. I suggest you do this, as you'll be able to look at your previous sketches and instinctively understand where you went wrong with them, how you've improved and what knowledge you've gained since. You'll think "I can't believe I called this good" but that's normal and it means your current level is really great compared to how it was before. How long have you been drawing? My early pictures in maybe feb-march 2012 were atrocious: 1 2 3 4

My last entry in my compilation thing was the from the 13th I better make the most of this weekend.

[Willsun]

Oh man, this thread's been alive again since I last checked it months ago. Eh heh.

I love reading through this thread because everyone's so positive about helping and being brave to post drawings. Recently I drew a Rarity and a friend was interested in learning how I did it so I wrote up a small tutorial followed by a saved screencap of my lineart before I went into coloring it. This was all done in Illustrator CS5.

Lineart:


Finished product:


Illustrator's a real neat program because it's drawing with vectors so I can go back and tweak individual lines as well as free transform them if I see fit (make them bigger, turn them around, etc.). And the reason my lineart was sticking out everywhere was because for things like rarity's hoof ends, I wanted crisp, sharp corners. After I merge all the lines into a single "Live Paint Object," all the lines that have been criss-crossed are made into separate areas that I can fill them in with the paint bucket tool. For the parts I don't want, I fill them in with "transparency." I should have cleaned up all the hair lines though, because that means I had to color all the parts sticking out with transparency whereas I could have simply highlighted the lines and deleted them so I wouldn't have to worry about missing anything during coloring.

Anyway, I can give what little help I know about Illustrator to anyone interested! It's a good program if you can get it somehow. I'll try to draw more practice things for critique in here too.

Bonus: Extra Applejack I drew as a cameo for a fanart for a friend like a month ago. The cool thing about Illustrator is that I can free transform and stretch it big without losing data. I also realize the leg lines are a bit wobbly because they didn't look that way when it was smaller.

[GrimI'M THE WORLD CHAMP BETCHA CAN'T BEAT MEBALL SO HARD LITTLE GIRLS WANT A PONY]

The only vectoring program I've tried is Inkscape, and I could not get it to properly ink lines for the life of me. Looks like a bunch of micromanagement anyway.

I can't bring myself to get all lecture-y again so I'm just going to post more stuff:

YEAH APPLEJACK WOOHOO


ALL THE LOVELY PONIES, HOW DOOOO YOU DRAW THEIR MANES


WHAT AM I EVEN DOING


That's probably the last thing I'm going to post here for a while, depending on how bored I get of going non-pony for a change.

[weedgoku]

Loving the facial expressions Willsun and Grim. As for the perspective stuff, all I can say is practice a lot with physical objects.

Sketchdump:



I'd like to say I'm improving re: facial expressions, emotions, gesture stuff etc but I keep making the same anatomy mistakes over and over so what does it matter? I keep trying to make them too realistic and not cartoony enough.

[HollowThis place needs a miracle.]

Two things: SAI doesn't support a transparent background. SAI doesn't have any vectoring tools (why would it?).

While it doesn't support a transparent background inside of the program (the transparency always shows as white), it will still be transparent if you save it as PNG (with the option "each pixel have opacity") if you don't draw a background or fill it with any color.

Also it does have vector tools. Linework layers are vector. It's just obviously used for lineart though, you can't color it with vectors. Linework layer is when you want to be completely anal about your lineart and make it perfectly smooth. Or maybe that's just me, I find when I do vector lines I just sit there for an hour tweaking them.

Oh, and I wanted to bring this up. Anyone on DA in this thread should join this group. They're so friendly and on occasion, amusing. They encourage you to draw one picture a week, with their theme. Of course I've never been able to produce anything for them because every time I remember they exist, I'm doing something else. Oh well.

[kefkafloyd]

I know those guys, I hang in their IRC channel.

[PerrydottoHow is a pegasus like a writing desk?]

Thanks for the critique on my sketch! I'll revamp it once I'm done with this horrible backlog of art I need to finish for Bronycon.

Also that group is great, I hope I can work with some of the themes in the future.

[GrimI'M THE WORLD CHAMP BETCHA CAN'T BEAT MEBALL SO HARD LITTLE GIRLS WANT A PONY]

I'd like to say I'm improving re: facial expressions, emotions, gesture stuff etc but I keep making the same anatomy mistakes over and over so what does it matter? I keep trying to make them too realistic and not cartoony enough.

Don't let that much get you down, because you're showing improvement in all aspects; and I can only imagine what it's like to go from a more detailed style to cartoon ponies. I still think a lot of anatomy corrections could stem from aiming smaller with the body proportions. Take a look at this:

A lot of things can still be redeemed if you happen to plan the body too small. For the cartoony reasons I mentioned before, and because the legs can be adjusted in tapering width to give back some of the body's target mass. If the body is too huge on the other hand, you'll just end up with a stubby pony unless you give the legs a lot of extra space, which may not be an option.

That's probably the last thing I'm going to post here for a while, depending on how bored I get of going non-pony for a change.

I'm a total liar. I drew a lot of different things yesterday so a pony naturally slipped through here and there:


Water reflection. Lousy scribble shading kind of ruined RD, mostly because it was done more lazily than quickly. I wanted the sunlight to reach over the top of her a bit with that, but it's hardly discernable because of the messiness. Also her right foreleg is freakishly dislocated and I feel dumb for it. I'm pretty sure pony anatomy makes it impossible for that to cross over her chest like a human arm.


This was so much fun. I never thought I'd find another use for a trick I developed from button-mashing video games, which the leaf edges here were drawn with. Don't really like this pony's two left legs though, and I ought to have tried making the background trees more 3D with cylinders and branches and stuff.

[londonarbuckleAND SOMEDAY YOU WILL BUCK LIKE I BUCK.]

Water reflection. Lousy scribble shading kind of ruined RD, mostly because it was done more lazily than quickly. I wanted the sunlight to reach over the top of her a bit with that, but it's hardly discernable because of the messiness. Also her right foreleg is freakishly dislocated and I feel dumb for it. I'm pretty sure pony anatomy makes it impossible for that to cross over her chest like a human arm.

I actually really like this. The scribbly shading is a neat look, and I like the pose. I don't think pony anatomy always has to work perfectly, especially if it takes away from the emotion you're trying to convey. She just looks so content and laid-back here that I think it works great. Maybe you could've gotten across the same feeling with a different approach, but I don't know what.

[In West FillydelphiaSCHWEIIIN]

How long have you been drawing?

All my life, on and off. Not long enough. This stint started when I found ponies last February. Most of my art disappears due to my constant formatting of my hard drive (it's the best space saver/antivirus). That's why I've had a DA for the past month or so. I can't see much progress on what I have there at all.

[weedgoku]

Oh, and I wanted to bring this up. Anyone on DA in this thread should join this group. They're so friendly and on occasion, amusing. They encourage you to draw one picture a week, with their theme. Of course I've never been able to produce anything for them because every time I remember they exist, I'm doing something else. Oh well.

Just a heads up, they seem to have a much more relaxed view on what's allowed and what's not re: being creepy.

Grim, thanks for the advice and the visual aid. I'll try to undershoot rather than overshoot the body thickness and do the opposite with head size.

I love the mood of the RD picture and the front leg anatomy is forgivable because of how much it adds to the relaxed pose/feel. However I don't like your second as much. The body's a bit too short and thick vertically and could use some widening. The front legs should attach higher up, too.

IWF: That's so similar to my situation it's uncanny - I've been drawing on/off my whole life because of inspiration from my older brother, but I've only started seriously practising my skills (both pony and other art) a few months ago. I also sometimes get into these slumps where I decide there really hasn't been much progress from beginning to end. The only thing to do about them is to practice even more, try completely new things every now and then and have patience, I think.

[In West FillydelphiaSCHWEIIIN]

I haven't drawn in a while so I figured I'd do something to stop the rust from forming.



Filly AppleJack could use a stomach

I can't help but compare my rate of progress to that of others and wonder what I'm doing wrong. I feel like I'm not moving and everyone around me is coming on very fast in the same space of time. I'm questioning whether there's something wrong with the quality of my practise more so than the quantity. While this last week has been slow, other weeks have been packed with sketches and random pieces, but I'm still not moving as fast as others.

[PerrydottoHow is a pegasus like a writing desk?]

I like the feeling of the picture and the pose. Work on the anatomy a bit and it's sweet!

Regarding your speed of progress: You might not be moving as fast others. Yeah, quite possibly. So?
Different people move at different speed. It's normal. As long as you practice different things, doodle a lot and use reference in an effective way, there's pretty much nothing else you can do other than keeping at it. There are always going to be people who are faster and people who are slower. It's perfectly fine.

To be honest, I think your problem is your attitude. I know how hard it can be to be fair to yourself and your work, believe me. But it only hinders your progress as an artist and as a person if you constantly put yourself down.

[GrimI'M THE WORLD CHAMP BETCHA CAN'T BEAT MEBALL SO HARD LITTLE GIRLS WANT A PONY]

IWF, that one's really good. The scene and expression snap together just perfectly. Though you could provide definition to things such as that railing; try cylindrical poles or rectangular blocks or whatever instead of a line/silhouette. That and the window ought to show up in the water reflection too.

As for improvement rate, being too concerned with the quality of my practice is exactly what was slowing me down at one time. I was also discouraged to see people who started out drawing ponies better than I still do now, until I accepted that it didn't matter.

Ultimately it takes fearlessness in the skill you're trying to develop before your progress really starts rolling. As long as you're trying to get better, you can do no wrong. So be quick, confident, and unrelenting.

[weedgoku]

I tried drawing on-model ponies while considering the advice from this thread I've received, and I think these sketches were really successful and show plenty of improvement:



Also in the works is a pic of Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie and I have done some planning + drafts. I have yet to start on the actual pic (planning something on the scale of that Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash pic, actually) but here are my preliminary sketches:



It's going to be really weird looking back on this in two months while laughing at my comments saying, "WOWZERS this is really good and cool and on-model!!".

[GrimI'M THE WORLD CHAMP BETCHA CAN'T BEAT MEBALL SO HARD LITTLE GIRLS WANT A PONY]

^I'm liking those. The upper left of the first image is especially close to show-accurate.

I still haven't stopped.

I switched to Paint Tool SAI on the third one there. I like its pen brush better than anything I've been able to get with Autodesk Sketchbook. I've been looking for a way to add quick colors beneath sketches without detracting from them when I do a terrible job, which is where that last one comes in. I'm just going to keep playing with SAI's coloring brushes and find something that I can match up with the sketches in terms of looseness. Green pony took way too long and actually worsened from the original because of me having no idea what I'm doing. (Plus I'm seeing that ultra-clean cel/flash aesthetic enough as it is, and I never liked it much to begin with.)

[weedgoku]

Grim: The second pic loses a little something that's hard to put my finger on - it has slightly smaller but wider eyes, and the front left leg switches from in front of to behind the body. On the other hand I envy your ability to convey emotion and gesture in only a few sweeping/flowing lines.

My progress has been slow because of school stuff, but I'm about halfway done on that Twilight and Pinkie pic and I made this in the meantime:

[Stuff]

Sharing my shit sketches.







I've only been practicing for a few days, so pardon the roughness and dark marks.

I have to admit, it's fun drawing these faces. Now to move on to the full bodies.

[weedgoku]

Horns are a bit off (i.e. angle, size) but those are really on-model. You tend to overuse horizontal and vertical lines though, this is most evident in the Rainbow Dash pic.

[GrimI'M THE WORLD CHAMP BETCHA CAN'T BEAT MEBALL SO HARD LITTLE GIRLS WANT A PONY]

Sharing my shit sketches.

I still can't draw their heads that accurately after 8 months.

More literal from me plus a traditional thing:

Just once, I would like one of those difficult poses to work for me.

e: God damn it I keep drawing these.

These are pretty doodle-y so it's probably better that I show them in big groups. At this speed I could also stand to attempt more with each sketch, such as backdrops and shading.