Okay, so, picture this: I decided to take on a somewhat… unusual project. It involved a cowgirl, a horse, and a whole lot of digital art. Yeah, you heard that right.
First, I scoured the internet for inspiration. I mean, “cowgirl on a horse” is pretty broad, right? There are tons of styles, poses, and vibes you can go for. I spent a good few hours just browsing images, saving anything that caught my eye. I was all over the place, from classic Western scenes to more stylized, almost fantasy-like stuff.
Then came the sketching phase. I grabbed my tablet and pen, and just started doodling. Rough shapes, trying to figure out the pose. This part is always messy, lots of lines going everywhere, erasing, redrawing. I probably did about ten different quick sketches before I landed on something I liked.
Once I had a basic sketch I was happy with, I started refining it. Adding details, fixing the anatomy, making sure the horse looked like a horse and not some weird potato with legs. This is where it really started to come together. I focused on getting the proportions right, and the overall flow of the piece.
Color Time
The fun part! I picked my colors. And I have to tell that I really like to play around with my color style. It’s not like that I just pick a color and fill them, I need my special color plate. Blocked in the main colors first – browns for the horse, denim for the cowgirl’s jeans, that sort of thing. Just getting the basics down. This part felt like those paint-by-numbers things, except I made the numbers, haha.
- Spent a while just tweaking shades, adding highlights and shadows.
- Trying to make it look a little less flat, a little more… alive.
Finally, I added some background elements. Nothing too crazy, just enough to give it some context. A suggestion of a dusty plain, maybe a fence in the distance. And yeah, that was pretty much it!
Honestly, it was a fun little project. The whole process, from the initial idea to the finished piece, took me, I don’t know, maybe a week, working on it a bit here and there. I’m no professional artist, but I enjoyed the ride, pun intended!
