Request :: Alzora

I love the stock you've chosen here! They work really well together, and you did an excellent job turning the forest into a night scene. It looks very natural!

The mane and tail have an excellent flow, I love how you've sorted the mane into "chunks' and did highlights and shadows accordingly. The tail is great as well, though I'm not positive the angle matches up with the angle of the horse. The shadows are a bit dark, but the highlights look great. <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/n/n…" width="15" height="15" alt="" title="Nod"/>

I think you did a fantastic job with the outlining of the horse, especially around the face. It is a little too bold and defined in some areas, so the next step would be to take a soft eraser on very low opacity and just go over the areas that don't look quite right; or areas that are too bright. Nice work, though!

The eye and blood really add to the photo, the blood blends in nicely around the chest and neck. I like how you've got in coming from the mouth, too <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/n/n…" width="15" height="15" alt="" title="Nod"/>

The lighting looks good, but if you want to define the highlights and shadows of the horse even more, you can try this. Make a new layer and paint black and white, white for the highlights and black for the shadows. You can then Gaussian Blur (Filter > Blur> Gaussian Blur) until it looks right (generally around 10-20px) and set the layer on soft light with lowered opacity if needed. There are many methods to do this, but I find that's the easiest. (;

Hope that helps, excellent work! <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/l/l…" width="26" height="17" alt="" title="Love"/>