/mlpol/ - Newfaggotry Drawfaggotry Academy: Seizing the Memes of Production

Part 1/5

In this guide I will walk you through the typical process for drawing show accurate ponies at the ¾ perspective, which is the most important angle. I do not use a deviated style because every artist should start by learning the core techniques of observational drawing, and once comfortable, develop their own brand by themselves if they so choose.

Keep in mind this guide only applies to this specific ¾ view—just use common sense to make the proper adjustments with foreshortening when switching to a different angle. Also the beginning stages, known as construction drawing or mapping, are the most important so I go in depth with those.

I will refer to each step and describe the process.

1. Here is how I lay out my page on my tablet (I use adobe) when beginning a new drawing. If you are new to drawing a particular thing (as I am with MLP), you should always use as many references as you need. I choose a pose in my head, and flip through MLP episodes until I find positions that are close to that pose and screenshot them. Feel free to separate the required images of facial expressions/body poses as needed because there is a 99% chance the character will have the correct pose but not facial expression. You can Frankenstein them so that they portray the desired pose with the proper facial expression. This is why I have so many references.

***As a side note, I tend to use Rarity for facial expressions because her hair covers up her face the least out of all the MLP characters. ***

2. Obviously just make a circle for the head. The head is the only difficult part to draw so you might as well get that out of the way first.

3. I draw a spherical X to help guide where I place certain facial features and indicate the direction the pon is facing.

4. This is the most critical part of drawing the head and takes a lot of practice to get right. This changes drastically with every angle the horse faces, so it takes a lot of adjustment to get right at the specific pose you are going for. Draw a 3-dimensional snout starting roughly 1/16th down from the center of the head (always think of the head as divided into quadrants, then 8ths, then 16ths for reference). For the width of the snout, just eyeball it because the bridge of the nose (space in between the eyes) is roughly 1/6th of the head wide. I use the vertical line of the X guide to space the base of the nose evenly on each side

***the fore-bridge of the nose is a hair wider than the background bridge due to foreshortening, but only a minor detail and can be ignored unless you are obsessive***
The two lines signifying the top of the snout erect perpendicularly, and point slightly down. I usually find myself editing this step later on once I draw more of the head and am able to see how all the elements look relative to each other. The background corner of the snout is connected to the chin, which extends to the bottom of the head where the vertical X guideline meets the bottom. Take care to make this line perfectly round.

5. Next, draw the ear and the back of the neck. The base of the ear starts slightly above the center line, about 1/16th and cuts inward because of the ¾ perspective. Remember that at the ¾ perspective the fore-ear isn’t perfectly at the edge of the circle, but somewhat angled towards you. Thus, you can see the back of the neck behind the ear. The neck actually cuts into the circle overlay a little bit to connect with the back of the ear, past its base. The ear itself is a little more than half a head tall, and its base is a little less than 1/8th of the head circle arc.

6. The eyes are the 2nd hardest part of drawing the head, and you should start by laying down these guides. Put 1 line equidistantly above and below the center. The head can be partitioned into 4 equal sections from top to bottom, and the top of the eye is 1/4th above the center, and the bottom of the eye is 1/4th bellow the center. Remember this is 3D, so the bottom line will appear that it is slightly closer to the middle than the top line, due to perspective—again, a minor note which is only necessary if you are overly concerned with accuracy.

***After drawing a few pons I realized that the bottom part of the eye actually ends a smidge lower than the lower 1/4th guide, although it’s difficult to see at the ¾ angle. This applies more so to frontal views so you can ignore this for the purposes of this guide. ***

It may be confusing laying down the guides at the ¾ angle but just eyeball it and it should turn out alright. Focus on where the vertical axis intercepts the horizontal. Also, note how the guides are at a slight diagonal angle ascending from left to right. This is because I drew those guide 2D instead of 3D (sorry for the confusion). Imagine them as ellipses and they would be perfectly parallel with the centerline.

7. Then just draw the ellipses for the eyes. At this angle the eyes are ever so slightly angling away from each other in a V shape (only slightly!!!). The fore-eye is a little less than half the head wide, while the background eye is much narrower due to the perspective and is foreshortened about 60%. I also added the front of the neck which I use the fore-eye as a reference, and it starts about in the middle of that.

8. Draw the mouth and the nostrils. The nostril will be just below the corner of the underlay box you drew for the snout.

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