A Piercing Stare

Another old picture, but I'm really happy to be posting this one. C:
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This was for the May 2009 round of #fantasy-xchange. I was assigned to draw for ~Ely-Wolf and I chose her awesome hippogryph character, Ivar. The May 2009 round of fantasy-xchange was a portrait/headshot round, which is why I didn't draw his whole body.

My goal was to beat my old picture "Through the Snow" in terms of quality/detail. Through the Snow was the portrait of Pash from 2007, I used it as my icon for a few years while on ~Pastiche-X, if anyone remembers that.

This is the first time I've seriously tried to do feathers. Normally I just half-ass them and treat them like fur, but I decided to see if I could pull it off. Surprisingly, the feathers on the body (the ones that are normally more flat/fur like to begin with) were more difficult to get looking right than the feathers on the face. I also found a new brush that really helps in rendering fur, feathers, clouds, pretty much anything. No more spending hours painting/smudging the clouds to get the right texture! ~*~The More you Know...~*~

I really don't know how many hours I worked on this picture. I worked on it on and off for three days, but not for very long on any given day. I'd guess about 15 hours total. :/
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