New Night Mare

Here's the early edition of the New Night Mare, just in time for Nightmare Nights eh?!

The light work in this piece was the main driving force, but also the biggest challenge. Some topics I end up returning to every few years or so, usually things I had in mind years ago that keep coming back. Having light within the body or going through a body and creating a "shadow" of what's inside has been one of those. Trying to create depth by using the values to show what's near the surface and what lies deeper within. I did had to quickly decide on what skull shape ponies have...

Funny enough I didn't expect to return to something I also haven't done in a while and that's a repeating feature like the skulls. Some of my very first pony works involved dozens of very simple painted characters, whether it's an army of changeling or gryphons. Definitely helps when you commit to a specific shape and paint just that over and over (trying to vary the angles, tho)

Anyhow, earlier this year I had a bit more plans for the spooky month, but with the way things went I wanted to at least commit to my primary idea. I also got to make Nightmare Moon. Close enough to a Luna to balance out the Celestias' I've painted. NMM's black coat remains an interesting one, altho it got mostly limited to the face, it's actually one I'd most closely paint like an actual horse's coat, the shine and all. Because it being black makes it rely almost solely on the "shine" it has.

It's probably my most unique take on her so far. Haven't painted her that often, but still, I stepped away from things quite a bit, but hope to have still retained her essence. I did ditch her armor, tho, the skulls and light was heavy enough haha.

PS: This is actually not the first iteration! Earlier this month I had a little experiment, but I chose a painting method that didn't suit the lighting and setting. Ditched that.
In addition, I hadn't planned to have the skulls try to poke through her skin until half way finishing her neck. But it gave me the extra layer of detail needed to make it look more interesting.

Now to try and plan the public upload time...