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south-wind — Breathe
Published: 2006-12-20 14:09:04 +0000 UTC; Views: 12136; Favourites: 538; Downloads: 88
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Description
An A4-sized pencil commission for ~Ponytail .
It's Nadja's beautiful mare Breathe, drawn from a photograph of Breathe's dam (light chestnut). She had boots on, which I was asked to take off, so I hope the feet are alright. I loved doing this, I had an amazing reference to work from.Full view to see the fur.
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Comments: 171
This is a gorgeous drawing! Everything about this is so lovely. I especially love how you worked with the background and kept it minimal, yet effective.
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This is absolutely gorgeous! One of the best pencil drawings that I've ever seen!
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O M G
makes my horses look like complete crap !
hahah maybe one day i'll be this good
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HOLY SHITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!
I couldn't stop staring at this for at least five minutes.
My jaw dropped and everything.
really FANTASTIC job!
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Hey there ! Your art have been featured here [link]
!
Sorry for the late notification.
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Hey there ! Your art have been featured here [link]
!
Sorry for the late notification.
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This is beautiful! Something about the chest bothers me, but the horse is absolutly gorgeous!
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I. Am. Blown. Away. This is absolutely unbelievable. The detail is stunning! You must have been really into the picture to stay with it long enough to do all the tiny details! You bring a spark of life to all of your work that shows that you love what you do. The other thing I love about this besides the detail is the motion of the horse. It makes it come alive!
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I guess I must have been pretty into it... looking back I don't know how I didn't give up halfway through. 
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Hi!
It's the usual speel, just let me know if you don't want it up there and I'll remove it!
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No, no, thank you for featuring my drawing! 
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what a splendid, special work of art. I know she will be well pleased. 
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Thank you very much!
For this I used just normal HB and 2B Staedtler or Faber-Castell pencils - nothing fancy or expensive, because the cheaper ones are a bit scratchier than more expensive types, and you can get them to a much sharper point than mechanical pencils, and these things are what allowed me to get that level of detail.
It took forever though, and I probably won't do something this crazily detailed ever again because it really kills your wrist. These days I just use mechanical pencils.
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hahah! wow. well it was really worth all the time and pain. 
i mostly use mechanical as well, but i have uber problems with the smudgies. 
thnx 4 the tips!
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Ooh, for that, always have a couple of blank sheets of paper to cover over your work that you've done, or the bits you haven't and don't want smudges on, so you can rest your hand on it.
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yeah... i always mean to.
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I would love to do more pencil work.. My problem is that I'm very shy when it comes to dark and light. I'm happy with my anatomy and everything, but I can't seem to get shadow and highlight down... This is amazing, by the way!
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Oh, me too! So what I do to get around that is do the black bits first, and make them as dark as I can without wrecking the paper. That way, you have the contrast established from the start and you can then work with the full range of tones from really dark to really light.
Thank you!
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This is just... well I can't really express my awe with words 
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I wish I could do work this good!!! mine is so amatur compared to this!!! AMAZING!!!
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Thank you! 
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hehe...*blushes* Aw...thanks...lol
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it looks so real wow ^^ that must of taken you alot of patience and time ^^ i love the shadng and smothness of it all .My mum loves it too (my mum a big horse fan 
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Lol, I was definitely running out of patience by the end of it - I was working on it for a week. All day. Every day.
Thank you! ^^
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wowiees i would of givin up knowing me XD hehe ^^ you did so well
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I love your work! How do you put so much detail? What are you using? The feet are amazing, the only thing I might comment on is that perhaps the white sock on the hind leg should be a little dark since it's most likely in shadow. I could be wrong since I didn't see the reference photo or anything. I love this...I wish I could draw like this. How long did it take you!? I greatly admire you!! :]
Haha, sorry I'm asking so many questions, I'm just trying to find a way to improve.
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Thank you very much! 
I think this took upwards of 60 hours. Sure, I think you could draw like this. You have a good sense of tone and colour, and you're very good at measuring angles and distances in your drawings. Just give yourself some time to develop (remember I did this at age 18), and decide whether that sort of style is what you really want. If you don't have the patience, maybe a different medium would be better - pastels are more fun than graphite, charcoal pencils can give pretty nice results quickly... or paint is good (watercolour, gouache, oil or digital - don't bother with acrylic, it's horrible).
Doing detail is just a matter of imagining how you want it to look, and not giving up until it's done... but be warned, art teachers will hate you if you do this (I'm finding it hard to get through art school because I want to put too much work into my drawings - they think drawings should be quick, and long, hard work is to be reserved for painting) ...and I'm not even sure if it's such a good idea myself anymore... I suppose when I'm finally free I'll do a couple and decide if it's worth the effort.
Painting is good though, because there isn't as much friction with the paper, and when you're working on a piece for a long time (this took about a week) the effect of that really builds up. Your wrist and elbow can suffer from an extended drawing (after [link] I couldn't lift anything heavier than a pencil with my right arm for nearly a wek O.o), but I've never hurt myself painting.
Anyway, I wouldn't reccommend trying a drawing like this at this size to anyone - this is only A4 size, so a lot of time was spent squinting at it trying to see the microscopic details, and letting my wrist rest after it began tightening up. A3 at least, or A2, would be better - then you could save your arm, and when you photograph it to show it online it'll give the same effect... 
Sorry if I'm going off on a million different tangents and not answering your questions properly. You'll improve of your own accord, just from looking at a lot of other artists' work and seeing what it's possible to do...
The best advice I could give you to help you improve as an artist is to start learning to paint as soon as you can, because you're already very good at drawing, and painting is a much more interesting and varied field that you can keep going at for much longer, and if you ever want to go professional, you'll get a lot more work, and your work will be much more valuable, if you paint... whereas if you try to do lots of itty bitty detail in drawing you'll just end up with repetitive stress injuries like meeeee. Sorry if I'm rambling on... I don't want to be a bad influence on artists younger than me.
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No your not a bad influence at all. You've answered my questions, the problem is, I have even more. haha. But I have no clue what size A4 or A3, etc are. I just use my sketchbook or computer paper, which is roughly around 11 x 8 1/2 inches. I'm not sure if A3 or A2 would mean bigger or what...
I understand what you mean about art teachers focusing mostly on quickness. I'm only in a small Art class at school, and even then, the teacher is all like "Draw as much as you can in 10 mins. You should have this much done. Don't make too many details." And all that. I'm a detail person. I feel the more detail, the better it looks.
I'm a little scared to try other mediums. I usually just use normal pencils (and colored pencils). I took a painting class with acrylic, lol. But watercolor doesn't seem like it's for me. It's so watered down and faded looking, it seems hard to make any small details since it willl just bleed. I could try oil I suppose. Graphite is very similar to pencil right? I did a little in class, but the part that hurts me, is the fact I can't erase. With painting you can paint over your mistakes, but graphite seems so definate. Thanks for all your advice. It really is helping me. Your work is very inspiring and I hope I will one day make my work as realistic as yours!
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I guess you have different paper sizes in the US... A4 is the standard printer paper in Australia, Europe etc and it's about 8 1/2 x 12 inches. A3 is twice that size, and A2 is twice the size of A3. Anyway, bigger paper sizes can be better, as long as they're not too big.
It's annoying being a detail person when nobody else is! But I think that a lot of the general public does appreciate detail, even if art teachers don't... I mean, it's how normal people judge how good an artist is, so I don't think it makes sense to completely abandon it, or you couldn't tell the difference between artists - the work of all the students in my art school's final year is exactly the same sketchy abstract style. 
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If we don't have watermarks, our hard work can easily be stolen, and possibly printed by others to sell. Choosing art as a career often means that your financial situation is precarious enough as it is, without worrying about losing what little money you could potentially earn. ...but we still do it, because we need to create art, and for the feeling it gives us, and for the people who like what we do.
But obviously you wouldn't understand the problems artists face, since you haven't submitted any art here.
We have a right to protect our intellectual property. And besides, my watermark is pretty transparent - you can barely read it in some places, and you can still see the work underneath it. Nobody else has a problem with it.
Grow up. Stop being a nuisance, annoying all these artists with this same comment.
You may be a year older than me, but your behaviour is extremely immature. You think you can just go around and be rude because you're on the internet and you're not face-to-face with us... pathetic.
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Wow, beautiful detail. Great job!! You have talent =]
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Wow! This horse has so much grace about it! You do a great job portraying a horse in motion!!!
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