Arena Artist Spotlight ~ August

[Griffin]

To celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the MLP Arena and our wonderful community of pony fans, we’re introducing a monthly artist spotlight! The idea is to showcase the variety of artistic talent and craftsmanship our members bring to this board for our enjoyment, and to get to know the artists behind their work. We hope you enjoy these features!

For our August spotlight we interviewed Annie!

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A watercolor picture I made in a sort of art nouveau style.

What kind of art and/or crafts do you do?

As long I can use a lot of colors in my art; I’ll try  any medium!
I believe this might also be one of the reasons why I enjoy ponies so much; I just love pretty colors!

Watercolors holds a very special place in my heart though and at the moment it’s my preferred medium but I still very much love the straightforward ways of computer art.
Besides ponies I do enjoy painting animals and wildlife and even crocheting.

When did you first become interested in art and/or crafts? What brought you into MLP art in particular?

I’ve been drawing for all my life so I can’t really say how I started.  My grandfather worked as an engineering artist and illustrator and I always admired him and his work and I often sat on the floor beneath his work bench with my own set of pens and papers and doodled all day long. My mom back then also did airbrush art on cars so I guess you could say it’s in the blood.

As a kid I absolutely adored the G1 MLP backcards and along with my beloved MLP toys I always saved the backcards and pamphlets just so I could look at the art.
(I even won a MLP drawing contest from the old “My Little Pony Club”. I have no idea what that image looked like though, but it probably wasn’t very pretty 😃)

When I then rediscovered my old collection as a teenager it hit me again how pretty the old G1 backcard art really is and how much I cared for my old toys and since I already loved to draw it was a simple thing to combine two hobbies into one passion.

Has your style, preferred media etc. changed along the way?

Absolutely! I feel like I’m still exploring my style once in a while. Actually, some days it feels like I don’t have a style at all! I just draw what pleases me in whatever style I feel like doing 😋

These days I am also trying to paint and draw more realism which is something I hardly ever done before but I must say I’m very much enjoying it!

Preferred media can change on daily basis. It all depends on what I want to paint and how I want the result to look. Usually it’s pending between watercolours, coloured pencils, markers and digital art 


In what ways has your art improved over time? Where do you still see room for improvement?

I think there´s always room for improvement. For me art is always a learning process. I am my own worst critic and it’s actually a terrible habit since I see flaws in every piece I do. 😅 I’m just learning not to let that bother me and just enjoy the process of creating.

However, I believe I have gotten better technically over the years and if I look back at my old art I can see that I work way more with depth, lights and contrasts in my art now. That, and just being better at sketching out the overall shapes in the beginning stages of a drawing.

Since I’ve been practicing realism this latest year I feel I have grown a bit as an artist as well. Realism isn’t perfection so practicing it has been good for me! 😃

What is your goal for this year (or 12 months from now)?

I have many plans and ideas for the future but most of them will probably take more than a year to achieve. 😅 At the moment I’m truly satisfied whenever I just the have time to sit down and draw something since I am usually so busy with other things besides art.

As I mentioned before I love having my watercolors close by and I have just started to explore gouache so I’m excited to learn more about that medium.

My long term goals is to do animation and game coding. Mostly animation at least. There´s something satisfying in seeing your art come to life but it does take a lot of time and effort!

I have also entered the world of digital 3D sculpting which is also very fun and very different from what I usually do. I can see myself doing a lot of fun 3D projects so I’m excited to learn more!

As a last goal I am hoping to find an online platform where I’m comfortable posting my art on. 

What would you like to say to new, aspiring pony artists or someone who is still looking for encouragement to share their artwork?

Have fun and explore!
The more you practice art, the better you will get at it 😊 Might sound boring but it´s true.
Setting short term goals or even daily challenges might be a fun way to get going. There´s plenty of community art challenges where you can participate to get practice and have fun (like inktober, doodlewash, brushwarriors and many more)!

And I’ll say it again; Have fun!

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Majesty- Queen of Narnia...Erh, I mean Ponyland!

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Sugarskull - A sweet pony I made for halloween!

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The official picture I made for Ponyfest 2022. Starring the mascot Inga and also Applejack. The theme was "Treasure hunt"

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Based of an old MLP sticker I used to adore when I was a kid 

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Rosedust - Queen of the flutters, with a slight redesign

Thanks for the interview, Annie! 

[shockponie]

Annie, you are so talented! I especially love the art nouveau style watercolor, but everything is incredible. Wow. Thanks for sharing!

[brightberry]

Beautiful!  These are so amazing.

[Heart Of Midnight]

  Annie, you are an incredibly talented artist!  So beautiful! Interesting interview!

[Tropical_Sunset]

Gorgeous!!

[NovelNerd]

Oh wow, what beautiful work.

[Annie]

Thank you all for the nice comment! It warms my heart. I've always really loved the MLP community
And thanks to Griffin for putting me in the spotlight