http://fav.me/dd026ql

It took me far too long to finish, but I made a manip. First time attempting to do one in around three or four years. It's by far the best out of the... three I've ever made, but it's far from being good, if you ask me. I mean, I'm proud of it for sure, but I don't think it's all that good. I'd love some critique with a side of tips, please! I thought I'd type out what I think I need to work on to compare what I see to what you see.

Mane/Tail: I definitely need to work on painting the mane and tail. It looks too fake to me. I must've redone it three or four times and this was the best I could get before I got too frustrated to keep fiddling with it. I don't think it's really rough (especially considering how my manes/tails looked in other manips I've done), but there's a lot of room for improve. The tail seems really off to me. I don't know if the way I did the base is screwing up the entire look of the tail or what, but something just seems off. I actually do like the way the highlights look in the bottom part of the tail, though. I don't think it works for the lighting in the image, but it might look nice in the right setting she says apprehensively...? The mane is supposed to be short, for two reasons: one, it was like that in the stock and, two, I could not get a long flowy mane to look right with the position of the neck.

Grounding: I think I'm titling this section right. The hooves don't look like they're standing on the ground of the background stock. The back ones do, but the fronts don't. I had no idea how to make that work on the hard ground so I sorta just left it (oops). As far as the hooves go, I don't think I did too awfully bad in making them look like they weren't covered in grass before?

Lighting: I definitely need to work on my lighting and figuring out how the light in the background would make the horse look. This was the first time I ever attempted to add shadows and highlights to the horse and, while I don't think they necessarily work on the butt, I'm happy with the way they worked out on the face and neck? Kinda makes Mr. Pony look chisled?

A few questions I have:

1) How does the eye look? I attempted to paint it blue, but it's kind of hard to see. Does it look fake or does it pass as an okay paint job?

2) How do the hooves look? Next time I'm choosing stock that doesn't involve a lot of cloning the grass away, haha. I'm not quite sure where that smudgy line around the fronts came from? Is that noticeable or am I just being nitpicky?

3) Did I overdo the blur in the background?

4) Are the credits placed in a weird spot for this image? I couldn't get them to not look too obscured or too in your face elsewhere. Did I make it work or are they obnoxious where they are?

5) How are my personal critiques compared to the actual image? Am I spot on, way off, or somewhere in between? I'd like to know how my eye is, haha.

Any comments on it would be appreciated! I really want to learn and some critiques on this piece would really help. Thanks in advance

The only thing I can say for sure is the hair needs work, but even I could never make it work lol xD so don't feel bad and keep working on it. It also needs a shadow, and I think the eye looks great! Other than that, I can't say. I'm bad at graphics lol.

Hair needs work, but steps in the right direction. :) Hooves look actually pretty good! Could maybe harden an earaser brush or paint brush to give it that nonsmudge feel. Since its like a dirt, rocky grounding. You got the blurring right, like where to blend. But you can blurr abit further back from the area where the horse stands. And maybe farther away the blurr gets greating, closer is not so much. And lighting is very well done! Coloring matches, and the horse isnt like 20 shades off. Really well done! Overall i think you are doing great and heading in the right direction love!! :D Keep up the amazing work!! 

I think it's pretty good! I'm looking on a tiny mobile screen but the only thing I think it's really missing is a shadow. With the hair, my suggestion is to work with as much of what's already there as you can. And use a scratchy rough brush. There's a million graphite pencil brushes you can download. I find they work the best and look the most natural because horse hair is typically pretty thick and coarse. 

Link Tree

1) How does the eye look? I attempted to paint it blue, but it's kind of hard to see. Does it look fake or does it pass as an okay paint job?
no comments on the eye since i can't really see it. a soloution to this could be to paint the forelock falling on the horses head rather than off to the side like that. example: http://fav.me/dc04xj7

2) How do the hooves look? Next time I'm choosing stock that doesn't involve a lot of cloning the grass away, haha. I'm not quite sure where that smudgy line around the fronts came from? Is that noticeable or am I just being nitpicky?
you're mad idk what you're talking about, the hooves look amazing!

3) Did I overdo the blur in the background?
the blur to the bg look fine, however the small landing right behind the horse should maybe be blurred a little less since it's close to the focus point. 

4) Are the credits placed in a weird spot for this image? I couldn't get them to not look too obscured or too in your face elsewhere. Did I make it work or are they obnoxious where they are?
credits look fine, lol

5) How are my personal critiques compared to the actual image? Am I spot on, way off, or somewhere in between? I'd like to know how my eye is, haha.
for the hair, i think it might be too stiff. maybe try to add a little more flow, let loose your wrist to get some more motion in the hair. if you're going for a black mane/tail, maybe darken it a little, to where it matches the black on the horse, right now it looks like it has a blue/grey tint to it. but nonetheless, it's beautiful. the flyaways looks really good here since there's little to no wind motion going on.
for the grounding, try adding a shadow. shadows can really make something like grounding fit in place really well!
for the lighting, i usually like to make my own light source. i actually used this bg awhile back, and you can see how i made it a little brighter on one side, so i made that side of the horse slightly brighter than the side we're looking at: https://sta.sh/01bbwr346n89
making the belly a little darker, the topline a litle lighter, and adding in a low glow around the horse can really make it pop!
this piece: http://fav.me/dbwk914 shows a good example on how i've done lighting in the past, and there a lot of really good lighting tutorials, but this one is probably my favorite: http://fav.me/d41lbyt

Ah, yes, the missing shadow... I made a mental note to add a shadow, but then I totally forgot about it until I uploaded it to da. At that point, I was burned out on this piece so I just left it, making another mental note to not forget to add the shadow next time xD.

Thanks for the comments, guys! I really appreciate them! I'm going to look into some brushes to download and keep all of the tips in mind when I work on my next practice manip :)

haha, i feel!
i usually make a long list on my manip of things i need to do. so i'll have this list that ranges from hair, lighting, grounding, whiskers, shadows, reflections, ect..to not forget things xD