[Harvest Moon Fanart] Jill/Pony Experiment

So I'm gonna have to be honest, I didn't have any original intentions of drawing this character when I started sketching. But as I started drawing features, it kind of fell into place and ended up committing to it. I set a challenge to myself mid-piece by only colouring on a single layer. I've seen a friend do this before and decided I just wanted to try it. So this is my result. I have mixed feelings, but for a first attempt, I'm going to be kind to myself and say it's alright.

I was going to go further, remove the sketch layer (I am actually quite fond of pieces with more sketchy looks sometimes) and try to effectively watercolour the lines in for the dimensions, but I think that's something I'll try in a different piece after some more practice. I really enjoyed working with the different blending tools Manga Studio 5 has. I used a mix of normal blur, finger tip smudging and fibre smudging (especially this one on the hair for some attempt at texture) and it was fun to work with. 

Overall, this was a nice attempt on my behalf. I've been very uninspired lately, with a lot of personal stresses going on right now, but I started this last night, finished it this afternoon, and I feel a bit better for at least getting a piece done. Otherwise, my artistic time has been devoted to drawing my own emotes for Twitch (yay, affiliate sub program is live!) - if you'd like me to post a preview of all 3 emotes together let me know, I've avoided it for now thinking it wasn't really relevant on here, but it was an artsy project for me. I also worked on some basic editing for a friend's emotes too so that's at least kept me busy.

Tools: 

UGEE HK1560 Display Tablet
Manga Studio 5