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sVa-BinaryStar — Meeting Milady
Published: 2012-03-14 03:39:56 +0000 UTC; Views: 3410; Favourites: 147; Downloads: 0
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Bleh -finally finished but I like all of maybe 20% of this. Defiantly not worth the work that went into it. Hate it really. I only like the foal and the lines. Bg bothered me too much so I just threw a watercolor blur over the whole thing to add texture and brought down the saturation to let the horses stand out more. Always did like watercolor.But now we know who the mystery foal is!!
Foal from a prize breeding from *bovidaeloony
We are under the belief that she is infertile so we think she should be safe as a pasture mate to Bray even when she is older. After all, they have the same hair style.
Name: sVa Milady
Breed: Zorse- Norwegian Fjord x Zebra
Gender: Filly
Sire: Golden Gun Norwegian Fjord Excellence Blood
Dam: She's Something Else Albino Pains Zebra
Genes: Ee/AA/DPDZ/nCrz
Personality: Coming Soon
Update. I officially hate the background and am [ this close ] to trashing it and just doing something plain.
Update: Still working on this image-want to get it done before I start the next project. The foal is missing because she is finished and won't be revealed until it's finished. Anyway, just wanted to share this because I've done a lot of reworking on Bray's line. With many thanks to *lantairvlea who red lined him for me:
I'm taking out the back grass too and going to had draw it in, or make it more blur. Also, still need to finish painting the mountains then going to work on shadows on them. And might reword the petals on the tree, but I plan on having some petals falling and the wind catching them up and carrying them towards the viewer so we see some of the petals get bigger. Bleh-now I don't know where to start tonight.
I've been working on this long enough I figured I could at least post a WIp up now. Bray will be having a little pasture mate!
Her identity will remain hidden until it's finished...you will be surprised! *death to my eyes from snow glare*
Trying to really build up the background and maintain a 'painted' feel. Probably will loose it when the horses are painted, but we will see. I need to decide if I want to do grayscale with this one or something else.
Refs: *used for bodies-heads and necks ended up being freehand-no refs
Foal-[link]
Horse-[link]
Related content
Comments: 63
Aww, they are so cute! I like the snow melting while spring is on it's way!
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Dawww they look so cute together with the matching hairstyles 
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Thanks! She's going to be fun to work with. She's going to be my "cosplay" pony. who gets entered in all the costume shows and such. But we will attempt to train her in something, maybe hunter jump. 
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I figured it was a hybrid when you made the mistake of keeping 'her' identity hidden 
And I knew about this girl too
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Again his back end looks so much better with your revision! The tail is more naturally set and looks like it belongs to him and the whole hind limb structure is just vastly improved.
I think you did pretty good with the background. It really is trial-and-error getting used to what works and what doesn't. I think part of the issue is you aren't quite consistent with what is in and out of focus. You have things at the same distance as the tree that are out of focus, but the tree itself still seems pretty sharp. Just things to keep in mind in the future. Nothing is ever lost, it all counts towards your experience!
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This looks wonderful!!
The background is really good, but I know your problem, I always hate my backgrounds. I think it's because you don't see them the first time and it captures you, you see every mistake you think you made. I love how you made the stallion look curious, sometimes it's hard to put much emotion on realistic horses, but you definitely made it
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Really beautiful picture 
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hunny, really.3 if I could draw background like that, I would be happy and not hating my own ...
mine compared to these are peanuts.
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I like the background, the mountains and far field look great. The tree needs some work, I would recommend looking at pictures of trees that grow in pastures since trees grow differently in open spaces with lots of light vs low light or crowded places. Also a trick that I have found that works (for me anyway) is to add a divider between the far background and the foreground, like a fence or rock wall, that way the change in details level is less noticeable. With the foreground where ever you have green I'd add some kind of grass growing up since it looks a little off with some growing grass and some flat green spots. Also in spring there is mud, I'm not sure how idealistic you want your picture to be but you could replace some of the flat green in the foreground with some browns too.
Sorry for the long comment you said you where having trouble so I thought I'd throw some tips out there, feel free to ignore some of all of this, I won't be offended. I am very excited to see how this turns out! So don't give up and keep the background since its coming along great.
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Ooh, very cute! I think you should keep the background, though. I love it. You might want to make the tree into a regular green tree, though, since the pink contrasts rather sharply with the blues and greens of the rest of the image.
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Honesty, I like the bg, the only thing that Im not a huge fan of is that tree, I mean it really doesnt contrast well at all with everything else. And we need things going on in the sky, like trees or birds in the distance, something. But Im really liking this so far <3
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So cute! But you know what, I bet we are all in for a huge suprise.
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I love everything here, the foal looks great!
(And please don't be offended by my bit of criticism, it looked like you wanted some and I didn't see anyone else mentioning it, so I thought I would put in my two cents. I don't know, perhaps I am wrong because it seems that nobody else noticed the neck so maybe it's just me
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Don't you dare trash the BG!!! It's amazingly pretty!!! Just like Mesmerized said. DON'T TRASH THE BG! D: The foal is soooo cute too, I can't wait to see what she looks like colored! And Bray is SO handsome!
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I really like the background! This whole thing looks great! I think the changes to the pose that the redliner did worked very well.
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Don't scrap the BG! It looks fantastic, really! 
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OO I love teh idea for the petals
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this is gorgeous! How do you get ypour lines so straight?
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I use the pen tool in Ps.
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oh ok. I must sound stupid, but Where can I find that?
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^_^ it's not stupid, just might be hard for me to explain. But here's a tutorial on it if you are interested in learning. It might seem confusing at first, but it's worth it in the end. It's a little more time consuming too.
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ok. Whats it called?
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The Pen Tool in Photoshop
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I love what you're doing with the background except for your use of the grass brush. You are so beyond the grass brush it is not even funny. You have these lovely sprigs of grass here and there and then you have the grass brush patches that interrupt the flow, especially since the grass brush makes it look like the wind is blowing the far background grass to the right, yet mysteriously leaving the foreground grass alone. The other problem with the grass brush is that it has an eternal hard, defined edge. There's no way to make it really look painterly and since everything is in sharp focus none of it is allowed to fade into the background, solely relying on size to denote distance rather than focus and depth cues.
Keep in mind that things tend to get greyer/bluer and lighter as they recede into space. You can always add a "glaze" layer to achieve this without having to repaint anything.
I doubt you want to change any of the line art at this point, but Braydan's chin and lower lip are really small, making him look like he has an overbite. His tail is also set really low, though I think this would be helped if you curved the line going from his haunch to his tail slightly rather than having it be almost perpendicular and appearing a bit stuck on rather than flowing out as part of his spine. There are a cople of other little things here and there that could use some tweaking, but it is looking good overall and I'm excited to see it as it progresses or is finished! I especially like the foal's "I'm just as baby!" expression.
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Yep you're right about the grass. That's just me being lazy with it after having worked for a few hours. Instead of continuing at that point, I should just stop and take a break. You've convinced me to fix it because I didn't really like it anyway. I only used the ps brush because I was frustrated over how long the foreground grass took.
And yes, mental check off about the blue hue when I get to finishing the mountains/hill. I'll probably use the lasso tool and then hue down the shadows on the right side in various places to give it more of an uneven surface look. Well see how that goes. Probably will be lazy about it. lol
And again yes, I think I will fix those things you mentioned about Bray. They shouldn't be too hard to do. One thing I've been noticing (that might be too hard to fix) is it seems his hind end is on a different plain than the front. It's like his right sight legs are even but the back left isn't. That may be harder to change.
Yep! The baby is doing the mouthing they do in the wild to show they are little and innocent.
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You'll get better at it as you do it. You'll also discover that you don't have to draw every individual blade *grin.* You may also want to take the blur tool or something to the hills as they're looking a bit more detailed and information-filled than your middle and foreground stuff. I know you've put a lot of work into them, but too much detail back there will really detract from your lovely subjects!
Trying to explain the leg issue in text just wouldn't do it, so here's my thought on the whole hind limb complex: [link] You might lower the right hind slightly from here looking at it, but I fussed so much with that hind end I tragically settled on "good enough."
Oh, they do it in domestic situations too! I knew one horse that tried (and failed) to use it well into his third year. The only thing that saved him is that his mother lived in the same herd and would trounce the other mares if she was in the vicinity, but if she wasn't around he would be smacked back into his place (he was a 16hh monster, the rest of the herd was unimpressed).
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Reworked Bray's lines! I think it looks much better now and doesn't stand out to me now. Thank you so much! Still have tones of things I want to do with the background though. Probably going to take away more snow, it's too snowy to have blossoms on the trees. Bleh, we'll see where it goes. I just like dogwood blossoms/cherry blossoms, whatever this tree is.
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Hehe The foalie is no Nordy foal. (have to do the breeding picture first)It's a surprise! Time will tell if watchers think it's a good surprise, or dumb one. But I'm excited either way.
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lol, thought it was XD
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Can't wait to see this finished 
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soo pretty!
i think you should do the horses in the style of the bg, not greyscale
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I will try! It's hard for me to paint with texture and maintain the right colors.
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