Field of Battle, Colored Pencil Final (Patreon)

If you have been following me for a while you would've seen the digital  development of this piece as it evolved from rough color thumbnail  into its final composition   and here is the finished colored pencil piece.

    This piece is a Patreon reward for Caerdwyn who saved up two years of rewards, and for all the hours of work he's done to help make my Picarto  stream as successful as it is. In fact we unveiled this piece on the stream last night.

     At 19" x 27" this is one of the largest colored pencil pieces I've  done, and with the Strathmore 500 series vellum Bristol Board taped to a  support/work board it's also at the ragged edge of what I can do on my  drawing table. In fact I had to stand up to work on the piece at times  just so I could have enough reach. Another measurement of how much of a  effort went into this project is the fact that it generated 3 cups of  pencil shavings from my electric pencil sharpener. 

    Due to  the nature of the composition this piece was almost entirely done in  colored pencil and Prismacolor Art Stiks, with just a little bit of  technical pen and gouache. Another thing that was a challenge with this  piece was keeping Celestia clean and free any of the background colors.  Especially since I used a lot of indigo blue in this piece. Indigo is a  pigment that will lift relatively easily from the working surface, even  if your using tracing paper as a barrier between your hand and the  picture. This is especially true if you've been blending indigo blue  with OMS.

    As a result I was constantly monitoring whether  any little bits of indigo pigment were getting on her and gently  removing them with a Tombow Mono eraser. Indigo blue is what I refer to  as a Bully Pigment. If not handled with respect it will often overwhelm  and smother other colors when it is blended with OMS. Since Celestia is a  very pale pink. Yes that is correct, she's not white. In fact there is  only one point of pure white and that is the glow at the tip of her  horn. Also there is not as much black as you might think in this piece.   

    I plan to sell prints of this piece at Bronycon this year along with some other color pieces of mine.