[c] Cordovan Jones (Patreon)

This was a commission for Cordovan LePegasus of his fursona/oc? Cordovan

He's a pegasus (I didn't draw his wings), and much like my space alpaca Vouge, he's a massive old pervert. A Texas Clydesdale who never grew out of the 1970's. Really rowdy. Prone to fighting when angered. But the majority of the time he likes to creep on others he finds sexy so he can absorb them. Yes you read that right, this character can absorb others, taking on their features and youth for a short time, with the commissioner's note stating, "You an tell when he's recently absorbed someone because his wrinkles go away". 

He'd be GREAT friends with Vouge!

The interesting thing about this commission was trying to piece together so many potential pitfalls in the character's design. Had I made the character I would have never though to have given a horse an afro, let alone a porno stache. So I really have to hand it to the commissioner's creativity because he originally had this character drawn by MLP artists around 5-6 years ago. And if I know one thing about MLP artists its that they such ass at drawing anything more complicated than MLP characters. -- The refs he gave me weren't terrible, but you could tell that these artists struggled to put so much on the limited real estate their style gives them. And to be fair, I did too.

Naturally I wanted to flex and draw a horse from the front. Characters with long snouts are notoriously hard for most artists whereas I've always found them easy. Although I quickly ran into problems when it came to his eyes. Normally I wouldn't even talk about this but there was something off about his eyes for the longest time, until I fell back onto one of the strengths of my style: the erasure of detail.

If you look at Cordovan's face near the eyes you'll see that I don't close the shape, nor do I close the shape of the afro. They just bleed into one another but it works. Your brain fills in the division, but your eyes aren't bogged down with cluttered information. Sometimes I wanted a feature to pop (like his mustache), but for the most part I found myself erasing more detail than I kept. For example look at the naked Cordovan's extended leg. It's nothing but contour from ass cheek to hoof. Slightly exaggerated from the 3D I use just to drive home that this old hoss has some heft.

I then finished it up by adding some... idk what you'd call them... but these chips to imply a change in the surface of his bellbottoms and give the pants some kind of texture. Likes smooth leather? Again, I don't know. I'm not a texture guy, I'm a contour guy.