Overall

Vision Vision

Originality Originality

Technique Technique

Impact Impact

Hello again, i hope i can add something here.Before the nitty gritty Im gonna start off by saying i really love this picture; the drama, the epicness, the no holds barred hilighting. I have already submitted a critique to you on another of your peices, so any suggestions i made there i will leave out here unless directly relevant to the star rating.Vision:Well, its an epic battle scene, evocative of the kind of Calssical era battle paintings i remember seeing in the National Gallery, always depicting some well rememberd historical event or another. Spears, upraised, banners flying, huge shiny army, sunny day - the works.The flavour text in the description really adds a lot, creating a kind of accompanying fantasy history that really gives the work the extra dimension of depth that a historcal painting would be built on.The different banners puts me in mind of the different lords in british history. (i admit my history knowledge is very poor, so i have no more words, but i know that it was a thing.) Again, this is all re enforced by the flavour text.The different armour styles on the princesses is also really cool, and i find it evocative of armour from that period in history. The tiaras too.The composition is not something outstantingly unique, but it doesnt have to be; again, it fits with the history of the picture given in the text.Originality:Well, it's ponies, but apart from that.. There are some OCs as well as the God Princesses - I like the head shape of the one to the right - The armour is as unique as a suit of armour can be. Most of the unoriginal elements are suited to the theme: the composition and leigons of spears are things that are commonly seen in this type of painting.I wouldnt say that this kind of unoriginality even counts, because it is imitation to evoke ideas, the four stars is pretty much just because its MLP.Tecnique:Again, good application of paint. It might be a little better with more water or just less drybrushing, as in places youre picking up the texture of the paper which in this cace is breaking up some of the lines and making the picture flow less- especially on the manes, beards and helmet brushes of the soldiers. Hair is made up of lines and its tough to represent it with course brushwork.Excellent job on the grass, thats a really smart way of rendering it. Last time i had to paint grass I tried to paint every individual blade. I cannot stress how much doing that sucks. also, it doesnt actually look that good.I really like how youve done Luna and Celestia's manes. The stars and hilights on the different colours of her mane really work well. Im not sure weather or not it would benefit from smoother paint application - the way its been done does make it look nebulious.The Clouds:this is my main beef with the tecnique in this picture. Compared with evrything else in the picture they do look quite crude.I have a few suggestions.First, it easy to think of the sky as a flat background to the picture, but remember that the sky and its clouds are three dimensional and subject to the same rules of perspective to the rest of your picture. Cloud banks stretch from the foreground to the background in the same way hills to. Keeping the physical reality in your mind will really help you create original compositions effectively. Remember, even a skybox has perspective on it.Second, rendering. Clouds are really hard to paint. You wouldnt think so - theyre just blobs right? Wrong. Problem is, theyre 3D, and theyre huge, and to top it off, theyre part transparent, often backlit, and made of tiny particles of gass. Also, they're not white. To the human eye they can appear yellow, blue, grey and white, and dont even get me started on sunsets.To deal with their awkward shapes, wait for a day with cool clouds, go outside, get a paper frame and hold it up to the horizon. Observe how much sky is there in the picture, how the shapes of the clouds fall and what the perspective is like relative to things on the ground.Then just do some studies of clouds. Drawing or painting, to get an idea of how real clouds are shaped. Theres loads of different cloud formations and they all look different, but if you get a bit familiar you will be able to paint much better skys with both lifelike and stylised clouds.If you want some refrence, check out JMW Turner, one of the best painters of sky ever.As for the colours, look, then look again. Its hard to explain this in text, but the way your brain proccesses colour and then tells you what colour things are is annoying when dealing with anything that is tonally complicated- like clouds or human skin or anything reflective. Its sort of like the difference between pink and light red i guess.This is a bit of a can of worms and sometimes its best not to open it, and i think when dealing with MLP as a source material, with its single hue feilds, you can safely stick to one colour per feild, but if you want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes, you can try doing studies of anything reflective.Again, if you want me to expand on this let me know.Impact:I think this again suffers from not the best possible photography, So it doesnt have the strongest impact that the original has.The pictue itself is epic, strong stances, strong expressions, grass blowing in the wind.Theres not really much i can rationalise about impact, especially since i first saw this picture quite a long time ago.I like all the spears.I hope that this critique doesnt seem too negative, this picture is on the whole and most very good, but it seems a bit futile to list all the things that are well painted.