When I learned to draw horses, I learned to draw them realistically, as I'm sure we all did. I practiced and practiced, trying to draw them as correctly as possible, over and over and over.

Then Lord of the Rings came out, and I became obsessed with Tolkien. It occurred to me that it would be funny to draw what the characters would look like as horses. This was the result:



There was an earlier version too, on paper, but this is the Paintshop Pro version I did when I was learning to make digital art. Some years later, with the help of my wacom tablet, I decided to redo these LOTR-Ponies in a new style, so with Legolas, to make him actually LOOK like movie-Legolas, I gave him Orlando Bloom's eyes and eyebrows:



I did the same thing when I made my character Adelais, who was originally just a "fursona" of myself. I put as much of ME into her as I could, which included giving her my own eyes and eyebrows:



Since then I've developed this style into what it is now, and all the horses I draw are drawn in it, just sometimes they have horse eyes, and sometimes they have human eyes.

...And this is why I get frustrated when people tell me how nice my "Spirit Style" is. I don't draw Spirit Style. I never intended to draw Spirit Style or base my own style on the film. And yet the comparison keeps coming up... Is it really as simple as eyebrows = Spirit?

I hate that it annoys me so much--I know this is my ego talking, and please forgive me for that. Can't help it.

Point of this journal:

So I wonder what you guys think I should do? I myself am thinking of trying to figure out a way of drawing their eyes that feels less like a reference to the film. Something less eyebrow-y, but still allowing me to give them good expressions. Any ideas?

Or am I being too sensitive about it? Me dunno! Help-a me!






=nikkayla






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