First try at drawing mares

[akita-ken 581]

so i've been practicing drawing my OC lately who so happens to be a stallion, and it dawned on me that i've never once attempted drawing a mare before. i used a picture of apple cobbler as a reference and tried to mirror cheerilee's colour scheme. took me almost a day before i could get the proportions to not look so awkward, i hope it didn't turn out too disastrous

 

 

 

[Hazardus_Havard. 479]

Make the body more rounded down towards the end. This would help curve it downards making it more feminine. Also the front legs, make then thinner since they are somewhat fairly male looking with how thick they are. Same with the back legs but mostly on the bottom.

 

Finally, just a side tip on the eyes - try and round them out more on the inside to the forehead. This will enlargen the eyes and add more depth to the sides of the pony making its overal appearance more appealing to look at.

Edited September 10, 2012 by Hazardus_Havard

[Planty 1,053]

Great picture Youve done a really good job -

 

however along with the improvement's Hazardus gave i would also say the neck is to thick and the head need's to be bigger

 

When you compare it to other ponies it look's too small for it's body

 

Keep practicing your great already but with a few improvement's you'll soon be close to perfect!

[akita-ken 581]

hey thanks for all the advice guys, i really appreciate it and i'll be sure to follow them the next time i start on a new piece!

 

Finally, just a side tip on the eyes - try and round them out more on the inside to the forehead. This will enlargen the eyes and add more depth to the sides of the pony making its overal appearance more appealing to look at.

 

i'm not quite sure i understand what you mean here though

[Pix3M 607]

I once heard of a trick to try to reference something up-side down. It works by making your brain to draw what it looks like and not what it thinks it looks like as pictures tend to make no sense when they're upside down. Wanna try it out?

[Boxxi The Brony 119]

First of all I must say I love your style of drawing second you may wanna. Put a little curve on the nose anyways good drawing.

[XUNUSEDXXX 3,459]

*bangs head against the desk in front of me repeatedly*

This makes my first attempts at drawing ponies like like dust and trash. Good job.

[akita-ken 581]

I once heard of a trick to try to reference something up-side down. It works by making your brain to draw what it looks like and not what it thinks it looks like as pictures tend to make no sense when they're upside down. Wanna try it out?

 

i tried using a picture of roseluck upside down to try doing what you said and one thing i noticed is that i'd tend to exaggerate the curves when the picture is upside down. in the end i got so dizzy i flipped her right side up again

 

i redrew the picture again (with a different OC in mind) and tweaked the curves and lines as best as i could to follow the advice given, tried to make the head as big as i could while 'squashing' it into a more oval shape and increased the curve on the nose. i also made her eyes 20% larger and tried to shrink the neck as much as i could. i also made all four legs thinner and shortened the overall body length while increasing the 'roundedness' near the end.

 

however i suspect the head might still be too small for the body; i'll probably take more time to draw more guide circles/guide lines on my next piece since the mistake i'm making seems to be systematic in nature. (i.e. i'm consistently drawing the head too small).

 

 

*bangs head against the desk in front of me repeatedly*

This makes my first attempts at drawing ponies like like dust and trash. Good job.

 

hey man just keep practicing! whenever you're free and feeling cozy grab a pencil and paper and start sketching away, after a couple of tries you'll start to see improvement! i've never had much of a flair for art as well (in fact when i was small, other kids would sometimes laugh at my work, i hated art in school D:)

[Pix3M 607]

i tried using a picture of roseluck upside down to try doing what you said and one thing i noticed is that i'd tend to exaggerate the curves when the picture is upside down. in the end i got so dizzy i flipped her right side up again

Hmm... what other tricks do I know...

 

I know of a trick of drawing the space around an object (to try to shift your focus to what a shape actually is), and there's always the grid method which gives you a lot of fail-safes.

[akita-ken 581]

Hmm... what other tricks do I know...

 

I know of a trick of drawing the space around an object (to try to shift your focus to what a shape actually is), and there's always the grid method which gives you a lot of fail-safes.

 

yes i'm a big fan of the guide grid, line and circle method cuz it always serves as a constant reminder of where an object is facing and how big it has to be in proportion to the other elements of the drawing. furthermore since it's on a digital medium the guidelines can be easily erased after everything is done, certainly much easier to accomplish neatly than with an eraser and pencil since some of the overlapping lines will tend to get rubbed off as well