Starlight Glimmer Quick Color (Patreon)

After spending most of the day recovering from last nights Picarto  stream I am finally getting around to posting this. I want to thank  and   for going through that ordeal with me. Note to folks. Where we were  yesterday was hotter than Death Valley California. 110F At the start of  the stream. Even the A/C in the studio could only blunt that so much!

     When I was at Crunchyroll Expo I had several people inquire about my  colored pencil technique and since I hadn't done a colored pencil stream  in while I figured it was time. I also gave myself a challenge of  seeing how much of the piece I could complete during the stream. Which I  will get to in more detail further in this posting. Also I decided to  tackle a character who I've never really drawn before.

    So I  went with Starlight Glimmer. My initial idea was to do Sunset Shimmer;  however I then remembered the study work I'd for the Spitfire Wonderbolt piece and realized that Sunset had many of the colors that were prone too  bleeding when lots of solvent is used. I was going to have to work fast  and loose and if I did that Sunset piece I'd have color bleed issues. So  I changed characters.

   Allowing for the initial slide show,  intermissions, and chatting with folks I had about 3 hours to work with.  In that time I effectively finished all the major elements of the  piece. However there were certain small details that I was unable to  complete. This appears to have caused consternation amongst the audience  that I did not notice in the chat until after the stream was done, but I  did get several notes ranging from general confusion to why I didn't do  something to being rather terse with me. Which kind of blunted some of  the euphoria I had for pulling off this accomplishment.   I will not name people but here's why I didn't tackle certain final details during the stream.

     The main question was I didn't do certain highlights to show that  Glimmy's lower legs were wet during the stream. Also why did I not put  things like white foam splash in the water. The reason are as follows:

1.  Did not have my white gouache with me which was necessary to render  those effects properly. I often do those as the last details in the  piece.

2. Even if I did have my gouache with me it was too hot  in the studio to work with the material in a satisfactory fashion. The  paint would've been drying in the palette about as fast I could work  with.

3. Doing the fine line detail finishing working can take a  far amount of time. I made a decision that it was more important to get  as much area covered with color than trying to do fine details.

4.  This was never intended to be a finished masterpiece this was nothing  more than a really well done color study. So often I don't worry about  details like that.

    Because I may offer this piece for sale  or donate it to some charity auction I did take the time this morning  and spent exactly 1 more hour putting in some of those highlight details  in since I was in a much better working environment. Do note just doing  these small details took 1 hour. That's why I skipped over them during  the stream.

    If none of us replied to folks commenting about  this during the stream it was due to mental overload on my part trying  to complete the piece, or folks just dealing with the sub-optimal  conditions of the studio that evening.