Derpy - Ooo Bubbles

Hello again!

I kinda like the idea of this piece. Have our little derpy stare at some bubbles and such, but also add a touch of realism that has a bit more than what this may have looked like if this idea was executed with vectors instead.

I've personally wondered if I could also achieve a level of realism with our cartoon ponies, but I eventually thought that if I wanna keep doing ponies, I may probably want to focus more with composition and coloring than creating form to our subjects that just doesn't have any to begin with. I dunno about how you feel about this, but for me, I've decided to spend my effort on composition, striving to do more with more simplier styles.

While I can't be entirely confident on what level of 'real' you want though, but I have some thoughts I could offer anyways. After looking at real objects long enough, I finally figured out how highlights work. Highlights do not directly face a light source unlike areas that has a shadow on them. Highlights appear on surfaces of an angle between one facing the eyes, and another facing a light source. Highlights appear where light directly bounces off a surface in a fashion like laser beams bouncing off mirrors. Places in which highlights don't appear are places where light is scattered around instead of simply bouncing off like a mirror.

Not that I have had much blond hair to observe, but my black hair seems to have very, very strong highlights. The highlights on my own hair is actually white. I would imagine blond hair to be the same. The hair we have here may have beautifully soft colors but the colors are rather muddy for hair as I'm not really seeing any strong highlights. I can't picture how this would impact the piece right now, but it's probably useful to know.

The highlights in Derpy's eyes are kind of like what I see on cartoonistic styles, but IMO they don't seem to work all that well when you try adding them to something more real. Flat vector work seems to get away with careless placements of eye highlights, but the large highlight on Derpy's left eye suggests a large light source from behind but the lower highlight suggesting one in front of her and below some. For some reason why aren't completely convincing highlights because it's a little dark for being reflections of a light source.

We could also probably go for darker pupils, considering there are darker colors in other areas of this painting.

I also noticed the ear being lowered. Last I remember from reading a few tidbits about horses, horses generally point their ears in directions which catch their interest. It may be more intuitive to have Derpy point her ears forward. Ponies from the show seem to lower their ears at times when they're feeling angry or scared among other emotions that might be fitting, but I've never seen them lower their ear when something fun and good catches their attention.

Then, one of the biggest things I notice is this curious fact that you completely left out a mouth in a piece that tries being a little real by giving our ponies some form. I am not sure how this works, and I am not sure if the two styles are clashing. I dunno how to feel about it as it's totally illogical but it works well enough.

Overall, great piece that falls a bit short on trying to be real, but it somehow can get away with completely leaving out a mouth. Heh. I suppose I still have a ways to understand why some art styles work while others fall kinda short. This works better than whatever intuition I have tells me,.