sparradile:

starseekers:

I really like how this part came out :D I wanted to make Persia’s skin more leathery looking but Idk how well I have accomplished that here

How does one draw water ;v;

Part 4 of vsm m6 

Keep in mind that leather is characterized less by wrinkles (which I think is what you were trying to use here) and more by scratches and notches. Leather doesn’t wrinkle well, it’s a thick fabric, and here too, a hippo’s skin (especially for a sand hippo) is going to be very thick. Cracks (if you were going for a cracked look and I just mistook it for wrinkles) appear in leather that isn’t well tended to, and so those could also show up if she’s gone through a particularly dry spell (which would not be lately in PMDe, since if it’s snowing the air has to be moist, and now that it’s evaporating it’s going to be very humid for a while). 

While I think it would be better to base a Hippopotas’s skin type on a rhino or elephant since they live much more in the sand than a hippo, this hippo has a good example of their skin:

There’s a lot of nicks and bumps, some long scratches here and there, but only wrinkles at the joints, and they’re pretty thick. Hippos don’t have much hanging skin; they have a lot of fat and then their skin is wrapped tight over that, so if you’re going to go with a hippo look for her, unless she’s severely dehydrated or underweight, her skin should not be very wrinkly. 

On the other hand, if you want to give her an armored hide that I feel they ought to have since that’s what will protect them from sand, a better reference would be this. (Link because it’s a very big picture, but it shows the texture well.) In this case, you would be using a lot of round brushes to give a scaled appearance (super easy to do, you can check out my old Wek sketches maybe? That’s really basic scaling but sooo easy), and that can give her hide a very thick, tough, weathered look.

I’m not sure which exactly you’re going to be going with for her, but in my opinion, armored/scaly leather sort of hides rather than smooth leather skin is much easier to color and texture, if that helps at all. :B

Water is a whole separate story and I dunno if I’m too good at that so I’ll leave you with my opinions on skin textures for now. 

Oh man all this information is great Sparra! I’m going to tweak this image and see if I can’t get the thick hide look to her. It would interesting to see how it turns out!

Also I just want to thank you for taking the time to put all this down just for me to have a better reference. That’s really awesome of you to do.