Ponythread Learns to Draw! Together!

[Thanqol]

This thread is BEST THREAD.

Anywho, here's a sketch I did for a halloween costume contest thingy. Twilight, Derpy and Carrot Top as the Spanish Equestrian Inquisition from Monty Python:

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And the inked/coloured version:

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My advice to anyone who wants to draw ponies? References. Everywhere. All the time.

My big advice to you is line colour/width. The reason this looks odd is because you've got very thin straight black lines. They cut through the picture like lasers, separating everything from everything else. Experiment with thicker lines, as well as colour.

Also, the clothing in particular looks extremely flat. Try having a look at clothing bends and folds - once you start to get your head around that, things will improve dramatically!

Eyes look good, though!

Here's a sketch of AJ as a human I did a while back. I was doodling the mane 6 as humans, trying a new style, and was really happy with how AJ turned out. Fluttershy and RD were OK too, but needed more work. The rest were... not great.

Maybe some day I'll take another stab at the rest of them, but for now...

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You know, I'm not really a fan of AJ, but here she kinda looks cool

Freckles! Needs freckles! This is otherwise quite a cool style, but I'm most interested to see it in action poses!

Here's a few things I've worked on recently. a little hard to see, since I took the picture with my phone. They're not ponies (No, that comes next alongside my story)! but just drawing attempts.

Swingset at my local park:

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Self-Portrait!

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Ha-ha! I am hidden behind my goggles!

The swingset looks great!

The self portrait is generally good, but the top of the head hairline/shadow thing looks weird and blodgy. If that's a dark shadow, it looks really out of place given how well-lit the rest of the face seems to be. Otherwise this is pretty cool

I'm trying to draw a lineup of the main cast, for a larger scene with original characters, but unlike OCs, these present a problem, in that they have an established look, which I have to replicate.

I'd like some pointers here, maybe some traits or features I've missed, or things I drew wrong. Don't pay attention to the sketchiness, this is just a sketch before proper drawing. Pointers on wrong anatomy would also be useful, because for me at least, wings seem to be the new hands, and ponies in general are still a rather new item.

I think that my main problem with this is the mouth shape. Pony jaws are deceptively difficult; it's really easy to make them look too square. Rainbow, for instance, looks like she crashed into a wall recently. Rarity and Twilight look better.

The trick with pony jaws also comes down to line thickness. Look at some screencaps: the nose part is really thick, and then thins out to a graceful curve down along the chin that tapers out. Also merge the nose into the eye a bit more; the curves follow, and it makes the pictures look more harmonious.

The wings, however, look fantastic.


And good luck to everypony! This may seem hard at first, but it's absolutely worth doing! You won't believe your progress if you stick with it.