Shrine of Celestia

EQD NATG 2, day 3: draw a material pony

Up on the Canterhorn, above the new city built on its face,

Where pegasi shy away, prefering to roam the base,

Stands a statue to the princess, her star our greatest boon,

Raising not the loving sun, but instead the nightmare moon.


Ancient ponies would probably forget Luna. I mean, look at stuff in our own past few hundred years that's been mythified or forgotten entirely, despite being seriously majour events at the time. I figure that after a good while, everything about Luna and Nightmare Moon would fall out of relevance, since the ponies can focus their love on just the one regent, but small effects would still remain. The comparitive dislike of the night, scary legends, and odd, otherwise unexplained mannerisms that are “just the way things are.”

So it wouldn't be at all surprising that seeing Celestia leave for the top of the tallest mountain to more privately raise the moon would be of interest. I mean it is kind of a quirky behavioural trait, especially when encampments started forming up on the mountain cliffs, noticing how she'd just sit and stare at the moon every night.

Celestia would manage to move on after a while, as would her subjects, but ponies being ponies, they still worship her to an extent. You'd have your extremists, of course — small clusters of ponies who treat her as more than what she wants to be, deciding to live in places of significance to their specific groups. Places where Celestia loved the moon over her own sun, for instance.


So anyway, that's the story here. Post–Nightmare Moon, Celestia would go up onto the highest mountain she could find, the Canterhorn, to be close to her sister every night. Eventually she'd change routine, but it's still a significant spot: ponies from all over would climb the mountain partways up to watch the tiny glint of light in the night sky that marked her lit horn raising the moon that night. Those camps would turn into an outpost to better support the growing pony sightseers, and over time, Canterlot would be born.

Later, smaller groups of ponies who still rembered would erect a statue of Celestia, showing that for a time, she held the moon in high regard, even moreso than the sun, it seemed. Any pony could make a pilgrimage of course, but this is basically the top of the world; nopony but the most dedicated would venture there, so the statue too would probably become a myth, along with this story.


Anyway, for this theme — a material pony — I drew an idea that's been stewing for a while now, which you may or may have not just read about. The idea itself is EXTREMELY ambitious, and as you can see, I didn't really manage to pull it off very well. Totally borked it, if anything, mostly on the anatomy. I wanted to have it like she was floating, right leg in front of the other, looking all godlike and stuff. The pose for holding the sun and moon though is the most important part: she needed to look like she had control over both objects, but was holding the moon up like it was the most precious gem in the world, nearly forgetting the sun in the process.

I don't really think any of that comes across on its own, since honestly I have NO idea what I'm doing with anatomy. I spent a good long while on those legs, but just couldn't get them to work, so instead of trying to make an ultra–quality piece, I opted for quantity! That is, actually getting a passable sketch out at the very least. In that, I did succeed.

And I learned something, too! I learned that my good friend *Couch-Crusader is a smart pony. He basically got me to remember something that I'd forgotten — that I need to put care and effort into things, because otherwise there's no point. With yesterday's NATG entry, I didn't do that as much as I could've. I actively slacked on several key points in the drawing processes, and the piece suffered for it, as detailed in the description and comments. So this time around, I decided to do, not just try.

It totally worked! I accomplished this mainly by taking lots of mini–breaks. It's something I already do in pretty much all my other multi–hour projects, so why I never thought to apply it to art is beyond me. Thankfully, by surrounding myself with smart people [like Couch], I can be reminded to do all this useful stuff I think of to do, before immediately forgetting about it.

Anyway, the mini–breaks helped by removing two feelings that have a negative impact on art: novelty, and stagnation. Novelty is a problem because it's easy to get too excited about a picture, and jump into it with maximum levels of fun, which then burn off before you're even halfway done sketching. Very annoying. Stagnation is sort of similar to the first problem except not. What happens there is where you're enjoying drawing, but you grow tired of it. Then you become annoyed, and finally frustrated, and you just end up having a bad time. That is dumb. Partially necessary in that you do need to fight through it to improve sometimes, but for this pic at least, I managed to almost completely eliminate it as a barrier to having fun.


I don't feel like listing individual issues for this pic, since frankly there are so many, it'd be pointless. The whole thing is pretty wonky, really. It is based off the Shrines of Azura in both Skyrim and Oblivion though, if you didn't already notice. I was mainly just dinking around ingame the other day, and, not having played since finding poni, noticed how the statues reminded me a lot of Celestia. Cue this whole backstory! Been wanting to draw it since, and this theme was a good excuse to, so there you go.