More Fanart

This was originally meant to be nothing more than an outline, as I was intending to use it as the base for a CGed piece like the one of Tonks that I did a while back. However, I somehow ended up shading the thestral while I was detailing it, which lead to shading Luna as well, and...

Actually, it wasn't a smart idea to shade it. Mainly because I was using a regular, No. 2 pencil on the cheap printing paper that I keep in stock for doodling. See, it's a pain in the ass to get any decent contrast with those materials. While it looks all right IRL, it tends to wash out horribly when I attempt to scan anything like it.

In order to compensate for this, I turned down the brightness and intensity. This preserved the shadows and details, but it lost the highlights. (To let you know just how much I had to darken it, I'll tell you right now that the paper is actually white, not that medium shade of grey.) To get the necessary contrast, I plugged it into Corel PhotoPaint and CGed the white parts in. The end effect is... not as bad as I thought it would be.

That being said, this isn't my final thestral design. The more I think about it, the more it looks like a kelpie rather than a winged horse of DEATH. Not nearly bony enough, and next time I'll be sure to grab some reference images of horses. The proportions (particularily on the neck length) are lousy. Although I think I pulled off making the head look dragonish rather well.