After the large poster painting, I needed to do something I could finish quickly. This took no more than a few hours, mostly because I left out a lot of unnecessary detail in the background. The snow and trees are just a lot of quick and dirty strokes, but they look convincing enough. I really like the window and how it features a subtle reflection of the background. As I often do with these quick pieces, all was painted on a single layer.
I had done enough colourful things lately, so with this piece I went with a more austere feel. Also Twilight hadn't been the subject of my art for some time, so she was overdue.
Created with Gimp and Wacom Bamboo tablet.
Creative Commons 3.0 – BY NC ND
Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (c) Hasbro
`anmari has been spreading her infectious positivity throughout our community for over 6 years. Throughout this time Ana has been at the core of all things devious, passionately developing an eclectic gallery, helping organise devmeets, participating in chat events and also recently completed dedicating her time as a Community Volunteer. We are absolutely delighted to bestow the Deviousness Award for May 2013 to `anmari, congratulations! Read More
Sta.sh
I guess Twilight can't stand to see everything ending
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Why is sad Twilight depressed about winter?
One is never to use soft brushes. When using those, you are not going to achieve a "painted" look, as the individual strokes blend into each other too much. With a hard brush the strokes stand out more clearly. Don't worry if it looks jarring at first, you can always fix it by painting over another layer. I really like using a square brush, but simple circle brushes work fine too.
Second, because you're using hard brushes, you'll have to paint over several layers to smooth out the gradients. After adding some basic shade and highlights, you can use the colour picker to select the right intermediate colours to paint over the hard edges and smooth them out. Don't paint at full opacity, lower the opacity slider or use pressure from your drawing tablet if you have one. You can vary the amount of smoothing to your liking. Leave in most of the hard edges for a more sketchy look, or paint over many layers till your strokes are almost invisible for a very smooth result.
That's as far as my technique goes. You'll still have to figure out the lighting of your scene before you can effectively apply any shading.