The Era of an Evil Queen (Contest Entry) (Patreon)

Hello everyone,

after what felt like an eternity of drawing single lines, putting piece for piece together and hours of working and re-doing some areas of the image, I can finally call this piece done as my contest entry for :iconestories:' "Evil Doers" Art Contest: http://fav.me/dddif7j

Since Twilight Sparkle was chosen to be the next Princess to rule Equestria after Princess Celestia and Princess Luna retire, I thought of a dark turn for her: She might actually turn into an evil queen instead, overwhelmed by the power she might desire more, she must fight to reach her goals, sending the country into darkness and fear while not being some kind of insane slayer, rather like a new version of Nightmare Moon. I assume there might be a dark power planting itself into the rulers of Equestria and secretly creating an evil alter ego within them - Hence why Nightmare Moon and Daybreaker have been created. Twilight Sparkle wasn't spared from that and she now has to face that as the gracious yet heartless Queen she has become. 

We thought of giving her a sword and armor to portray her might and power, to show how she can lead the guard and fight for her goals. In fact, this is even more precious and useful compared to the jewelry the other princesses wore before her.

I admit, the design took quite some time and effort to make while drawing it was very challenging. I wanted an epic, appealing style but very different from what I normally do to try this out so I went with a black and white Lining kind of style. In fact, all the "gradients" you see have been created by drawing single lines and crosshatching, there is no point where I used some kind of blur or anything I'd normally chose to work with. Crosshatching and lining was the choice here and took more time and effort to make. It was worth it though. In between I always was happy to see Twiliht develop.

Important are the thin white outlines framing the character and giving some kind of lumination effect to make her stand out from the background and showing there is a light source coming from her left (our right) side. Creating the metall- and shiny effects on her armor was interesting to do and came with lots of fun while giving her an overall plastic look and not only working with flat surfaces but rather making gradients was a bigger challenge. I think I managed though.

I even got to create my own brushes for that to enhance the speed of work I could do and also create interesting effects, for example in her wings. 

Enough said I just really hope you like it, I am looking forward to your feedback and admittedly hope it was worth it.

Check out :iconestories:' pae for more information about the contest!

Time: 7+ Hours (Lost track of it)