Mongol girl on a horse WIP

[Perihelion]

I figured some of you might be interested in my art process, and I always love critique (especially while in the middle of something), so I figured I'd post the stages of the next piece I'm making from start to finish.

This one is gonna be a challenge for me since I've never done a horse and am not very good at people, so it should be an interesting experience!

Don't have much so far, but I've started sketching out the horse.

Colors are just placeholders. As you can see, I'm trying to get the horse anatomy sorted out, but I think what I have here is pretty close to my ref. Front leg seems pretty thin, though, so I should probably fix that. Next up is to start on the girl, but I need to hunt down some more clothing refs first.

Reference:

 

[Perihelion]

Horse colors are still placeholders. Right now I'm trying to make the background work, focusing on depth for the moment. Will be adding more foreground detail shortly, and still tweaking the colors. I also decided I wanted the focus to be on the horse in the environment instead of just the horse, so I shrunk it. Composition is important to me, and I like to draw the foreground and the background together to make sure everything gels in the end.

EDIT:

Added some more detail to the foreground, plus a flowering bush for depth that I will probably redraw. Still very rough, obviously. Will probably work on the horse and rider next. Or maybe tweak the foreground some more since it looks messy and bad.

 

[Perihelion]

Worked on the girl a bit.

Decided this looked stupid and went to find a ref, then redid it like so:

Palette on the girl might change depending on what colors everything else ends up being. Also removed part of the bush because I thought it was too busy. Girl is still not quite right, but I think I'll do the rest of the horse before going back to her. I think I'm gonna redraw the horse's legs so it's in midair as it gallops. Or rearing?

Spoiler

? Hmm.

Edit: I think I like this:

Horse still not done, obviously. I'm thinking the clothes are gonna be not pink soon.

Spoiler: ref

Edit 2: Palette tweak and moved the leg up. I think it looks better now. Will probably still continue to mess with the palette. I always go through a lot of palettes.

 

[Perihelion]

So I just talked to Eyecraft and learned a ton about composition! He did this awesome edit for me:

I made this (eventually):

Moved the horse to the left so it would be going into the scene, made the lightness in the foreground concentrated around the horse to bring attention to it, created circles with the plants and leading lines with the horizon. I also changed the horse's legs (needs more still, I think) and did other miscellaneous things.

 

[WalkingAbomination]

It does look a lot better on the left side, i love the look and colors on this last one too, how long have you been at it so far?

 

[Perihelion]

Dunno, started yesterday. I've been picking at it off and on since then, probably, but not with any real push for progress.

And yeah, my colors always go through a lot of iterations. I like to experiment as the piece evolves. I like this last one but am not sure it'll be final till the rest is done.

 

[Dr. Funk]

That looks awesome so far peri. I really like the tone of it, very earthy. That's all I've got so far, really. Kind of hard to pick at a WIP. Hope you keep working on this, though!

 

[Perihelion]

Here's an update:



I think the horse and the girl are about done, but knowing me I'll continue to tweak them.

 

[Dr. Funk]

:D

Looking awesome peri!

I think I liked the old girl better though (the one where she was facing forward), idk why but something about that one kind of creeps me out. I think it's probably the face.

 

[Perihelion]

Yeah? I thought it was weird that she was facing away from the camera, and I thought not drawing a face was a cop-out. Faces at that size are hard as balls, though.

Here it is zoomed in, anyway:

 

[Perihelion]

Adjusted the girl yet again. I realized the arm was way too long, which I think might have been what was bugging me about it. I started doing some of the grass too.



But jesus fuck this takes forever to refine. I'm very seriously considering making it desert with a few clumps of grass around instead. >_>; That's pretty similar to what I did with my last big piece, but even so.

 

[Draycos Goldaryn]

wow. I just zoomed in on that last one so I only saw the girl and horse, and had to do a double take. it looked like a low resolution scan of a professional oil painting... Awesome!

 

[Perihelion]

Thanks, glad you like it! Now that the girl doesn't look really weird anymore, I'm quite pleased with how this is coming along. Still stymied on a background, though.

 

[Perihelion]

I'm working on this again! I think some time away from it did me some good, because I realized that the old background was too cluttered and claustrophobic. I did this instead:

The ground is bugging me, but I think it'll look better after I clean it up and make it grassier. I'm gonna try to fix the perspective of the girl too.

 

[regi]

The clouds struck me, at first glance, as rather round or U-shaped (threw me off a bit, it was almost as if the clouds were coming out toward you). Maybe it would look nicer if you had clouds more horizontal, but at different heights.

 

[Perihelion]

I might get rid of the clouds, but I was going for streaming overhead clouds in perspective. Although you can't really see that without the detail. I tried horizontal clouds before, and they were too boring and didn't mesh as well compositionally. Maybe I'll try it again later since you mention it.

 

[regi]

I see. It just bothers me how they cut off so strangely. Perhaps you could add more depth to the upper clouds, or make the curve less pronounced.

 

[Perihelion]

I intend to detail them so the perspective is more obvious, although I agree it's weird-looking as is. I'll look into it when I get there. Thanks for the input!