Sun Chariot final color

Celestia smiled and looked out over vast dry lake bed. The sun which had once symbolized her office was setting in the West. But now she was released from that duty and in her retirement she was finding plenty of other things to do with her spare time. 

    Speaking of time, happy hour should've begun at that roadside bar she passed a ways back. She could go for a drink, a meal, and some fun. The stillness of the lake bed was shattered as she brought her radial engine bike back to life. Then motored off into the sunset.

 If you've noticed I haven't been posting as much recently. Its because I've been working on and preparing to start working on several very large color pieces. Here's the first one. 

     This is a patreon reward for Caerdwyn who has been a patron since the very beginning and who sets aside his Saturday's twice a month to co-host my Picarto stream. Link. This piece represents many, many months of saved pledges and commitment on his end. Thank you.

     Whenever I am working on a color MLP piece there are couple of rules I generally follow:

     1. Boost the color saturation  and vibrancy. 

     2, Keep the use of earth tones along black and greys to minimum. There is very little earth tones in this piece, and a small amount of black used. Instead I used pinks, yellows, oranges, purples, and violets to create most of the colors in this piece. With the exception of her Highness's mane and tail.

     The piece is 14" x24" and was done on Strathmore 500 Series Vellum 2ply Bristol Board. The piece was done primarily done in colored pencil. Both Faber-Castell Polychromos and Prismacolor Premiers. These were blended with Gamblin Gamsol.

      Some initial underpainting was done with Tombow brush pens. Also I predefined certain elements of the piece, like the bike, with disposable technical pens. Once the colored pencil work was finished I went back in the technical pens and white gouache to enhance and define certain elements of the piece. 

     Including preliminary thumbnails, color studies, reference collecting, plus final color work I probably have about 60 hours in this piece. 

    FYI. The engine on the bike is loosely based on the Rotec R2800 engine. Link Which has been used by some bike builders to create radial engine motorcycles.