Guide: How to Draw Ponies

[Doctor-Whooves 288]

Forgive the misleading title. This thread is actually a request, from me, to see if ANY of you can teach me how to draw ponies.

 

First thing first: I am a terrible artist. Always has been, and, unless one of you is phenominal, probably always will be. My ultimate goal in life is to learn how to draw ponies. I'm always weeping, and I cry myself to sleep every night, because I can't. No, not really. But still.

 

Tools I have:

 

GIMP, paper, colored pencils, normal pencil. etc.

Oh, and MS paint. *insert trollface here*

[~Master~ Button Mash 2,307]

First off, you need to add Inkscape to that tool box. I'm sure you've seen the term "vector" thrown around a lot, right? Well, that's a program that allows you to make vectors. It's basically the ultimate program if you want to make ponies that look like they're from the show.

 

Next, here's a good thread, right here on MLPForums, that is a good tutorial on drawing ponies.

 

http://mlpforums.com/topic/41857-art-lessons-and-art-advicewant-to-learn-to-draw/

[Zink 80]

Forgive the misleading title. This thread is actually a request, from me, to see if ANY of you can teach me how to draw ponies.

 

First thing first: I am a terrible artist. Always has been, and, unless one of you is phenominal, probably always will be. My ultimate goal in life is to learn how to draw ponies. I'm always weeping, and I cry myself to sleep every night, because I can't. No, not really. But still.

 

Tools I have:

 

GIMP, paper, colored pencils, normal pencil. etc.

Oh, and MS paint. *insert trollface here*

 

Grab a sketch book and a pencil, look up some images and do contour drawings of them. Then work on shading, then line work. 

Tip: Take each step slowly.

[Doctor-Whooves 288]

Excellent. I've already seen your work, Zink, so I'll be sure to take that into account. In the meantime, I shall venture to this tutorial that Strato mentioned.

[Flaret 240]

http://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/01/pony-drawing-guides.html

There you go! There's lots of excellent tutorials on there If you want to learn how to draw ponies, use those. And also, forget that it's never a shame to use references, as long as you only use them as a reference and not as something to trace from (because you never learn from tracing stuff). For references from the show, there's a nice dA group (http://mlp-vectorclub.deviantart.com/) with a lot of vectors, usually taken from the show So they're safe to use as a reference. Try not to use the art of others as a reference too much, because if you do that you will most likely copy their errors too, and we don't want that! (most of the tutorials are safe, though, just go for the ones that look best. )

[Silverwisp the Bard 2,353]

Get a decent anatomy study for ponies (I recommend this one), print it out and pin it at your drawing place. Then start drawing. A lot. When you get to some good results, post them here and we will nitpick and point out what can be improved. Rinse and repeat.

[Pix3M 607]

Get a decent anatomy study for ponies (I recommend this one), print it out and pin it at your drawing place. Then start drawing. A lot. When you get to some good results, post them here and we will nitpick and point out what can be improved. Rinse and repeat.

 

Definitely one of the best anatomy studies, but an aspiring artist should be aware that the eyes are stylized from FiM style. Eyes are not vertically elongated - they're diagonally elongated.

 

 

I've written a couple myself, but be aware that it's an incomplete WIP:

 

http://fav.me/d5lfjb1

http://fav.me/d5lbq5e

http://fav.me/d5lwqfl

 

Do not look at how-to guides too much. They can show you a workflow with intricate guidelines, but not all workflows will get you what you want. You have to understand the anatomy to even make guidelines usable. Studying how parts work and knowing how it compared to RL horse anatomy be far more helpful than even my guides that are written basically as a response to how I felt about all the pony guides out there.

Edited December 30, 2012 by Pix3M

[Doctor-Whooves 288]

Definitely one of the best anatomy studies, but an aspiring artist should be aware that the eyes are stylized from FiM style. Eyes are not vertically elongated - they're diagonally elongated.

 

 

I've written a couple myself, but be aware that it's an incomplete WIP:

 

http://fav.me/d5lfjb1

http://fav.me/d5lbq5e

http://fav.me/d5lwqfl

 

Do not look at how-to guides too much. They can show you a workflow with intricate guidelines, but not all workflows will get you what you want. You have to understand the anatomy to even make guidelines usable. Studying how parts work and knowing how it compared to RL horse anatomy be far more helpful than even my guides that are written basically as a response to how I felt about all the pony guides out there.

 

Thank you, this was really helpful. I was kind of getting overwhelmed with the guidelines, but this dumbed it down enough that I could actually understand what's going on.