It’s a digital painting. All photoshop.

Started out as just a regular face sketch, but the big eyes and round head reminded me of Nazegoreng’s plush: For sale: Twilight Sparkle Custom Plush
So then I thought. I can probably not afford an actually awesome plush from her anytime soon, so I’ll just paint my own right?! Having a little fun, with Applejack.

Intended to just keep it a speed painting, but it started involving several other things I’ve been wanting to do and have done in the past. Making something look like a figurine was where my entire current style came from, and plushies are basically fabric figurines anyway right?

There was also the material practice. This ain’t exactly my usual material I paint, so that was fun to figure out the intricate gradients for. But I also had to figure out how the colours worked with it. I wasn’t exactly referencing an Orange pony, quite the opposite hah. So had to do some research on that and settle with something I thought made sense.

And then there’s the balance of how much refinement is needed to get the effect across, and not doing too much more for little added impact.

Of course, it was all a scheme to just make another Applejack.