Arena Artist Spotlight ~ September

[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 September spotlight we interviewed Koudoawaia!

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

I mainly draw digital art these days. I love drawing dragons, Lion King fan art and general animal art. I also do love drawing ponies, just haven't as much lately

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

I've been drawing since I was 2 or 3 so definitely got interested early on. I remember drawing pony art on occasion over the years but my interest in drawing ponies really took off when G4 and Friendship is Magic came around.

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

My style is definitely pretty Disney influenced. I admit it and am fine with it. My favorite traditional media is still colored pencils but lately I've pretty much exclusively been drawing digitally. I'm still using a mouse for my lineart but I do use my Ugee tablet for sketching, shading and backgrounds. I also use a ballpoint pen for my doodle sketchbook sketches still.

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

Definitely the quality of my lineart, anatomy, shading style and backgrounds. Art is a continuing learning process. I've been at it for over 30 years and there are still things to learn. My biggest weaknesses are still things like vehicles, anything mechanical and armor.

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

There is a project I'm keeping under wraps right now that I'd like to finish and taking on more commissions would definitely be nice. Those are definitely open.

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

Keep at it. Lots of practice is key to improving your art. If you're looking to hone your skills in pony art in particular, eyeball screen grabs or your own ponies. Oftentimes I have focused on a particular way a part of the character was drawn while watching something and applied it to my own work. As far sharing your art, you do need to be careful these days with AI image scraping on the move so always always always sign and watermark anything you post to the internet and it'd be best to post to sites that have policies against AI generated images so review the TOS and privacy policies of a website before deciding to post to it.

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Thanks for the interview, Koudoawaia! 

[Koudoawaia]

Thank you so much again for this honor^^

[Peepersponies]

Oh how awesome!! Wow, I can't believe you do your lineart with a mouse- that's so impressive!! I hope you'll share whatever your secret project is when you're done!!   

[Koudoawaia]

Thanks so much and yeah I definitely will when it's ready and able to be shared^^