Learning to Fly

So, recently (well not that recently any more...) I got my 200th watcher. A couple watchers before 200, I had said to myself, "Wouldn't it be nice if I drew fan art for my 200th watcher?" Then I totally forgot about that thought. Then, when I was at about 205 watchers, I suddenly remembered again, and realized to my joy that my 200th watcher was *thejackbull, someone whose art I had been watching already for quite a while. So yay! I got to draw a character that I was already familiar with

This is *thejackbull's fursona, along with her son Gio. The mare's wing is supposed to be truncated like that... I'm not sure why . I think it's actually supposed to show a bit of bone.. but trying to draw that made me queasy so I just made it a healed nub.

Anyway, *thejackbull is in a bit of emotional turmoil right now due to domestic troubles, so I hope this pic helps her feel better

I suck at wings. And foals. And backgrounds in general. Hee.

Originally I tried to paint this wholly in Photoshop, but it was too difficult and I gave up and moved over to openCanvas 1.1, and went back to Photoshop to do the background.

The reference picture is this one by the wonderful *Goodbye-kitty975.
The half-assed clouds actually look semi-good due to this tutorial by ~weremoon... and the tutorial was pointed out to me by ~mutantzombiebaby.
My own cloud pic helped me figure out the lighting.

Also, this is entered in ~Unicorn-Club's current contest - go over and check out the entries, there are some really good ones

edit: goofed up on the clouds a bit (I painted over the wings.. lol) so I fixed that up