You know, come to think of it, some forms of leather - the super-soft kind that seems to have this really fine layer of soft, movable material on it - could maybe be used as a canvas for testing makeup on short fur, too… At least, ‘short and soft fur/hair’ is what that material keeps making me think of, every time I come across the jacket of the type that I have. [I wish I could give you the proper name name of the material, just in case it might help in the future.  >.<]SCRATCH THAT, Google reminded me that the material I’m thinking of is referred to as suede. Depending on the quality of it that you come across, it can have a very soft and fine texture, and I again wonder if that might turn out to be beneficial for practice of this variety.

I, uh… Sorry, I was re-reading parts of the previous comments, and this suddenly jumped to mind.  _^__^;

But I’m glad I can make this part of your life more enjoyable. <3 👍

Ha-HA, so I’m NOT crazy! Yes!  >XD  If I had to guess the reason behind that choice to keep things subtle / the rating down, I’d say it was a spontaneous personal challenge that may have been brought on and/or helped by how tame the rest of the image generally is, or else by the question of, ‘Just how subtle CAN I make this whilst still giving the actual implication…’.

Best explanation or not, I’m getting a pretty clear picture from it - and that would explain the in-and-out curved path of her outline below the raised hoof! I’m pretty sure that’s what I was understanding before, I just didn’t realize a bone was there, so I think I had assumed it was a fat roll of some sort. Knowing it’s the hip bones I’m seeing feels a lot more right, and considerably obvious in hindsight.

Super cool that you like playing around with clothes, though! I think there’s a lot of unoften-tapped potential in clothing, draped cloth, and cloth accessories when it comes to adding extra life or a bit of spice to forms in images. I say that realizing that dressing up characters is far from uncommon, even with ponies, but it just seems like it’s seldom done in a way that really *pops*. Or else, perhaps that’s just me over-generalizing from expecting to find it whilst wandering around in the wrong circles. ~ ; P~  _^__^;  A decent example would still be your Luna and Celestia poolside piece, though, I think.

@Garden Tinker
Art is something that is a huge part of my life. Thank you for always having such engaging comments on my art!

For the shape of her underwear, I think I subtly intended it to suggest her anatomy, but I wanted it to be so subtle that it was basically as PG as possible. I didn’t want this image past “suggestive” (I don’t remember why as it has been 8 months but yeah haha).

I love playing with clothing tension in my work. I’m not the best with drawing clothes but I try my best to draw how I think they’d look realistically.

I intended her underwear to be like a thong. If you look closely, just above where they crease you can see a protruding bulge; that is meant to be her hip bone. I was using the mental image of a human hipbone for this position, so the straps are pulling in the flesh beneath the bone that would usually be smooth fat past the bone. Gah, that doesn’t sound like the best explanation, sorry ^^”

Oof, yep, I can believe that’s a toughie to imagine. I wouldn’t even know where to begin, myself. Unless you’ve got some sort of soft, faux-furred coat laying around. Or a piece of taxidermy.  o.O

If this is work for Rarity, she must have a very risque line in mind for production… Cornering an untapped market, looking to expand her business into an already lively direction, or just looking to shake up her brand image? The possibilities are endless…

Oh, yeah, you’re right on the wings! I knew there was something else about about them trying to scream at me, but I wasn’t quite getting a clear signal on it. The simple-ish design shaping of them is neat! And combining that with their colors is now almost giving me a slight impression of ‘divine’… (Likely from the ‘honesty’ or ‘frankness’ of simple shapes mixing with what could be loosely construed as very-light-tinted-gold colors?) I admit, I hadn’t noticed the contrast in complexity at all until you mentioned it, though I can now definitely see it between the wings and the wide-narrow-wide shaping of the foreleg nearest them, as well as the duality between the wings and the patterning of the fishnets being part of what helps keep the eye trained to the center of the image (when not held by the concentrated contrast of Fluttershy’s own eye area).

Taking a closer look at her socks after you’ve mentioned them, I appreciate the detail that the socks are under different amounts of tension. The sock on the curled foreleg is completely smooth save for the creasing in the pit between her leg sections, strained tight to the leg’s shape, while the straight leg has wrinkles on its sock that suggest the same (amount of) material being available but relaxed. (Clothing anatomy 101, I know, but it’s just cool to see both sides of the difference being simultaneously demonstrated, especially with the same item under two different circumstances.) What’s extra neat about the wrinkling, however, at least in my eyes, is how some of it is clearly stated with additional contour lines but some of it is more subtly described through aberrations in the primary contour lines of the sock itself.

I’m also just now noticing how the underwear straps pull in creases at her hips! I’m not well-versed enough in fatted anatomy to know if that’s correct, as my mind keeps trying to tell me that there should at least be some sort of body definition already there for the straps to slip into, but I can at least say that it looks nice here!* And given that I’m writing this on a screen with adjustable brightness, compared to the one I left my first comment on which is stuck on a dimmer lighting setting, I can also see that the panties are suggested to have a more rear-covering design (as compared to just disappearing between her cheeks) because of the small amount of material that can be seen wrapping around the back of her flanks, visible between her legs. Lastly in this area, I keep getting the impression that there’s a very, very subtle hint towards the feminine anatomy that would be covered by the underwear, specifically due to the shaping of the underwear’s lower outline on her right leg - and at this point I just seriously want to know if that’s real or if I’m actually just making something out of nothing.  ^_^;  Either way, it looks like the termination of her lower body structure is rounded out very well there, coming down to a flattened curve. That and her overall belly shaping/lighting makes her look healthful and full of organs, if I may, though I realize I’m now starting to sound rather strange…
    *:  (Unless… the straps are actually thicker than the string-like appearance they would seem to have, and that string-like visual is actually being caused by them sinking into her form? The thicker straps would then have enough presence to them to cause that extra creasing, pulling the nearby flesh in overtop them slightly… Although, the outline of the straps is pretty clearly on top of her outline when it reaches her hips, indicating that the string-like visual is intentional, so… Hm. Sorry, don’t mind these ramblings…)

There’s also a couple of thin marks below her straight foreleg that just show where her form is starting to crease from the way she’s twisting / the way she’s pulling that shoulder away from her chest.

Thanks for the response, and I’m glad I can provide some upturn! It’s fun discussing a piece of work like this, especially knowing that the artist enjoys the attention! I like learning about some of the ‘how’s and ‘why’s of what an artist does, and what their intents were with a given piece and what of those they feel like they did or didn’t achieve after someone gives them some thorough feedback.

I have a passive interest in being an artist myself, though when I attempt, it takes me far too long to get decent material on the page due to lack of practice. Until I’m in a spot where I feel more comfortable and driven towards putting in that practice, I enjoy learning little bits and bobs from creators and their personal touches.

@Garden Tinker
Makeup is one of the hardest things for me to draw on a pony, mostly because I know they’re covered in fur! I don’t really know what eyeshadow would look like on short fur so I kind of just did my best haha. I did want Flutters to look shy still, I imagine that she may be wearing this just to model some clothes for Rarity or something xD

When I did this piece I vaguely remember drawing the wings and thinking they looked too blocky or cartoony but I ended up leaving them as they looked simple enough to contrast with the more complex shapes (such as the socks or the fishnets).

When shading this piece I did want it to come across as if Fluttershy dyed her hair black, so I’m glad that translated well with using pink with highlights and shadows!

Thank you again for your input, I love reading it ^O^

Honestly? Thumbs-up attempt. It’s subtle, especially with the art style / body style / posing, which works really well for it. Contrasted by the intensity of the makeup around the eyes, said makeup section also including a very nice metallic dark-purple / black-rose, rather than all being a simple black. (The part where it’s actually a mottling of dark pinks and blacks, along with the shine, really helps sell the metallic sheen. This also goes along very well with the artstyle again, with the dottiness pairing with the crayonish contour lines, which helps ease the aspect of it being a pattern that blends/fades into a solid color (her fur).) I enjoy the twist sincerely!

Zooming in to double-check that coloration also clarifies the fact that the mane’s dark streaks are a similar not-actually-black, at least where the highlights hit them. And then this not only gives a more palpable impression of a dyejob (at least a casual / self-done one), but also both blends smoothly with the natural color of her mane, as well as lets the final combination of the dark stripes’ highlights and darkest stretches give an impression of a sinfully-tinted color moreso than a comparatively neutral pure-black would have. (Does that make sense? A really dark color feeling more ‘sinful’ than actual black? Especially with a shade of red? I just get a feeling of ‘corruption’ from the introduction of black, as compared to the statement or status of black…) Which is that much more fitting for being part of a ‘darker’ side of Fluttershy.

I admit that I’m slightly dissuaded by the ‘come hither’ impression I get from seeing the image at standard view size, but zooming in to the image’s proper 100% size shows that the lips/mouth are actually posed to complete her expression as something shy, uncertain, and vulnerable that speaks from the Fluttershy we know still being under that makeup and outfit. Her pudginess also helps to convey the underlying softness that remains very much a part of her, physically or otherwise.

And it’s certainly nitpicky, but I’m not quite sure I cheer for the particular fashion in which the eyelid makeup pattern just sort of fades into the surrounding fur… (The plain color itself graduating into her fur below the eye, without the pattern, looks great to me in comparison, though.) Granted, to be fair, it does almost look like she just put the eyeshadow on more lightly/flippantly as she reached the edges of her eyelids, and the extra bit of black/shadow around them is just what we can see of some sort of flat base extending past the edge of where she stopped applying the more complex color… Hm.

The lighter feathers extending from the wings help to further counterbalance how much visual ‘dark’ is leaning towards the left side of the image, particularly from her mane and its stripes reaching down to the same longitude (and how the last of said stripes blends into the background’s local black stripe, padding/emphasizing it). Actually… The part where - if I’m not crazy, because my brain keeps wanting to create just the barest outline in the black that follows the examples set by the thickness of the black mane stripe up to that point and the curve of the continuing pink stripe - the mane’s distinction just terminates into the background there is a really neat choice! The wings as wholes have a cute style, too.

Also, the combination of hard shadow and soft lighting was blended very well here, if the time I took to realize that both were in play at once is any indication.

And of course, I recognize the Assertive look of the mane/tail streaking… Balloon Party wouldn’t’ve been the same without them, nor a decent bit of our early music in general. I feel like I really should recognize the black-and-green-striped socks, too, though…

Any chance on that eyeshadow (or the dyed mane color!) coming back as a hoofpolish for her sometime~?  ; P