Pegasus
Alright so I haven’t posted anything here in 2 years. I was going to use this as a place to post my progress on each design. Well life got in the way and I halted progress on Ursa Major.
As you can tell, this post is titled “Pegasus” because I moved all my focus to a different part of the sky. I am part of the Great Lakes Planetarium Association (GLPA). At our most recent conference in October, a colleague of mine announced he registered a star for Indiana’s Bicentennial (Indiana is where I currently reside). This star is 200 light years away, so the light that is reaching earth now from that star will have left when Indiana became a state. This star is in the constellation of Pegasus.
He has set up a section on his website for Indiana’s Bicentennial star, which you can find here and here.
This image shows the star and where it is in the constellation of Pegasus *credit Stellarium*
This gives better perspective on where on the “horse” the star is in relation to the other constellations *credit Stellarium*
The star’s name is Scheat and it is the second brightest star in the asterism of the Great Square of Pegasus. Below is a better explanation on the translation of the star’s name.
Beta Pegasi (β Peg, β Pegasi) is a red giant star in the constellation Pegasus. The apparent visual magnitude of this star averages 2.42, making it the second brightest star in the constellation after Epsilon Pegasi. Its traditional name is Scheat,[11] a name that has also been used for Delta Aquarii. According to Richard H. Allen, this name comes from the Arabic Al Sā'id for "the upper arm", or from Sa'd. Arabian astronomers named it Mankib al Faras, meaning the "Horse's shoulder". It forms the upper right corner of the Great Square of Pegasus,[11] a prominent rectangular asterism.
The two images above are screenshots from the program Stellarium. It is a very useful program and I especially use it when working on constellation illustrations. This constellation artwork styles itself after traditional constellation artwork, but it is more simplistic. I’ve never been too crazy about the constellation art from this program, but I figured out a long time ago I could switch out the artwork for my own.
Source
Source
I don’t hate this art style, that would be like hating art from the Middle Ages because they didn’t understand anatomy. Its old traditional art and it is what it is. But it's not my art style so that’s one of the reason’s I want to make more updated art. I use these traditional constellation designs for inspiration for my own designs. I also look up the mythology behind these stories to discern any other symbolism that I could incorporate into the designs.
Problems I had with this design
I’ve drawn horses before. I did grow up as a girl (to rely heavily on stereotypes) I had have toy horses and even grew up near a horse farm. But for some reason the horse anatomy was eluding me. Thankfully, I was able to find a lot of tutorials for drawing horses.
Horse Tutorial Part 1 (Anatomy) by Vanycat <3 this one
How To Draw Horses Tutorial
Horse Tutorial
The first initial sketch wasn’t terrible, but it was very crude. I needed to know what direction to take the design.
I like how comparing these two it seems to get better and worse all at the same time. In order to accurately draw the horse I looked up lots of reference photos
Here are some that I used. I had wanted to make Pegasus look like he was running, but it became easier to make it look like he was leaping.
white gray overo paint 1
chestnut tobiano stallion 2
Bay Horse Rearing Stock
Bay Horse Rearing Stock
This shows the completed drawing of the horse part. I couldn’t find many progress images with the wings. Drawing the wings was somehow more difficult. I couldn’t decide on how to position the wings, or figure out the perspective of them. I also had to keep in mind to not making the entire design too large, going beyond the constellation boundaries, especially if I wanted to show it in Stellarium accurately.
These images are from when I was testing the design in Stellarium. I ended up needing to fade the left wing to make it fit in the constellation better. To do this I needed to make a compromise with the constellation outline. You’ll be able to see a better example of that in the final design at the bottom. I’ll go into more detail then.
Tutorials and stock images that helped me
Wings Tutorial by Vanycat < only useful wing tutorial on the internet
.Macaw wings 5. 1134
Swan Wings 1
The next challenge was the mane. (At least there isn’t too much more to talk about, just pictures to look at. Don’t worry, the end is near!)
I went through several different styles of the mane before I came up with one that didn’t look terrible. This is not the final version.
A note about the coloring: I drew up the designs in neon colors because it's traditionally what I used when design the blacklight mural. I would use bright colors to draw out the designs and that habit carried over to these designs. I have different colored hair here so I can tell the difference between all the different lines. The wings were green when they were a work in progress.
The next few images are work-in-progress of drawing out the final design of the mane.
This is a better example of why the colors needed to be different. You can see this by looking at the area by the ears and the line of the neck.
The hair was a bit overwhelming. I had wanted it to be more simplistic, but I couldn’t manage to make it any more stylized without losing the motion and feel of the hair. The shape of this hair really shows movement with Pegasus and it really helps the viewer visualizes wind whipping through the mane.
And here is the final design! When it's in Stellarium, the left wing will be faded. Everywhere else, it will look like this. The problem I had with the constellation outline placing is that the little section just about the left wing is supposed to be on the face because it represents the head. Even the star’s names indicate that. I had to place the constellation outline like this in order for it to fit in stellarium better. It was that or completely remove the left wing and I really didn’t want to do that after all of the work I put into it. Another option would have been making the left wing look more like the right and make it look more tucked in. But again, all the work I already put in.
A final thing I was considering was adding fur around the hooves (think clydesdale horses) and making wings look a little more interesting. Pegasus is supposed to be the God of horses and I wanted him to be more than a horse with wings. I think now, the wings are fine. I’m not even sure how to make them look different and “functional looking” at the same time. I would like to research different shaped bird wings to see what purpose serve. Adding fur to the hooves would add more interesting features to the design, but at the same time it would add more balance to the design since the mane is pretty intense.