Ferronia

Some of you may remember that a while back I did a piece that was sold at auction to support the funding of CloudCon depicting a ponified version of the statue "Freedom Triumphant in War and Peace." Well, ever since finishing that drawing the general idea had persisted in the back of my mind and I started to think on how that design would translate into an actual character. Lately I had begun to form some more concrete information on who she is and where she came from, and with that I decided to try and give her a makeover in order to make her design a bit more personal and relevant. In terms of general outline she hasn't changed much, but the small details are where she now stands out. I toyed around with a number of different shades for the various areas on her body, and while mostly things turned out okay, I started out with too bright a green for the back skirt portion. I think in the future I'll try and balance out more areas of the polished bronze color with the verdigris hues on her body and mane/tail. This was also an opportunity for me to try out a more drastic method of shading and highlighting. For those of you interested in Ferronia herself, let me try and sum up what I had in mind for a backstory:

Ferronia was originally the creation of a metalwork sculptor in the old Crystal Empire named Latten. Half-commissioned half-ordered to build a bronze likeness of King Sombra, Latten had the idea to instead make a different sculpture under the King's nose, working day and night to not only finish his intended work but also creating a number of fake parts to serve as a diversion. The stress of the ordeal and his increasing fear of what would become of him after his ruse was inevitably discovered caused Latten to isolate himself and project his feelings onto the statue, which he began to call Ferronia. When the day of the unveiling came Latten went on a tirade against the tyrant in order to try and rally the other Crystal Ponies, but to no avail. The statue was removed and unceremoniously discarded in the frozen wastes far outside the Empire proper, where it remained untouched while Sombra's curse was in effect. After the activation of the Crystal Heart by Cadence in the present day, the huge burst of magical energy, along with the lingering feelings Latten had poured into the statue itself, caused Ferronia to awaken as a conscious being.