[p-ond]

𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐃𝐒
𝐻𝑒𝓇𝓉𝒻𝑜𝓇𝒹𝓈𝒽𝒾𝓇𝑒'𝓈 𝐹𝒾𝓃𝑒𝓈𝓉 ♠️ 𝒟𝒾𝓈𝒸𝑜𝓇𝒹 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝓋𝑒𝓇 ♠️ 𝒮𝓉𝓊𝒹𝒷𝑜𝑜𝓀 (coming soon)
I just made a quick server for you to hang out and share your horses, lore, or role-play if you like. I won't necessarily be super involved here but it's open in case anyone wants it!

Grovebreds are a fictional line of thoroughbreds that are free to create. Feel free to make your own! There are no design restrictions so you can go ham x

You can make up lore & also use the lineart for other purposes, as detailed below <3


Template Lore: Feel free to build on or edit this for your own game!

Grovebreds are horses from the breeding program run at Hertfordshire’s historical stately residence, known as The Grove. The estate boasts acres of sculpted gardens, a golf course, tennis courts, and many hectares of paddock and pastureland set around its adjacent racetrack and training grounds. A full cross country and combined driving course is available, along with indoor and outdoor Olympic standard arenas, and these are opened for the use of neighbouring livery yards. There are miles of off road hacking available in the nearby Whippendale Forest.

*The grove is a real place that exists, but I have exaggerated its amenities and grounds in this lore.

Here's an aerial shot of the grounds for some inspiration. What's pictured is the IRL golf course, but this could easily be adapted to be a hacking track or driving course for your own lore!


There's a nearby canal (The Grand Union Canal) visible in the top right that runs through the grounds, and part of Whippendell Forest pictured in the bottom left of this image.

𝑅𝑒𝒶𝒹 𝓂𝑜𝓇𝑒 𝒷𝑒𝓁𝑜𝓌!

Q: How do I use the greyscale base?
A: I'm glad you asked! It seems complicated at first, but it's actually very simple.

In greyscale bases, the shading, lines, and highlights are all on the same, one layer.
In this greyscale pack, you will find many greyscale layers of different manes, tails, accessories, and tack items, but no alpha lock layers for colouring!
This is because if there was a lock layer for every accessory, there would be too many layers and the file size would be too big!
It's easy to make your own lock layers and get the shading set up. Read the tutorial below to get started:

𝐓𝐔𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐀𝐋

We're going to colour in the travel boots on this horse. The boots can be found inside the "tack" folder.

Step 1: duplicate the travel boots folder. Keep the original [don't delete it!] in case you need it again later on in your colouring session.

Step 2: merge the duplicate folder.

Step 3: duplicate the merged (flattened) layer again.
Step 4: now you should have 3 copies of the travel boots:
1. the original folder (keep this safe in case you need it again later)
2. the lock layer (the one on the bottom)
3. the shading layer (the one on the top)
Set the top layer to overlay, and set lock alpha to "on" on the bottom layer.

Step 5: now, you can colour over the lock alpha layer, and ta-da! you have red boots!


Improving the Shading
You might notice that the shading on the red boots is... a bit flat. The next steps explain how we can improve that.
Duplicate the overlay layer 3 more times, and set all the shading layers to dodge 20%, soft light 100%, overlay 91%, and hard light 10%, in that order.
I went ahead and added an ombre to the alpha layer to make the boots more snazzy too, and this is the result! Play around with different layer modes to get a look that you like. Read more on layer modes below!


About Layer Modes
I typically categorise layer modes into 3 types: shading, highlights, and contrast.
Some layer modes are good for adding shading, some are good for accentuating highlights, and some are useful for controlling the overall contrast in the artwork.
Let's take this plain palomino base as an example, and see what some different layer modes do to it:

You can see the layer mode effects in this folder here.
Add and dodge are my favourite layer modes for highlights, but screen and lighten can have their use cases too! I often use soft light, overlay, and hard light to get the shadows, and linear light and vivid light can be useful for tweaking contrast.

About shading
Some layer modes apply what I call reductive shading, and some apply what I call additive shading.
Hard Light is a good example of reductive shading. You can see in this example that the shading is black, and doesn't add any nice brown coloured tones in the shading, it only overlays black shadows. This is typically less attractive in an image than using additive shading. Layers like Hard Light and Multiply can be useful when set to low opacity (around 10%), because they help bring out the very darkest shadows and add contrast to the drawing.

Overlay is a good example of additive shading. You can see in this example, that the shadows are a nice, attractive shade of darker yellow, rather than plain black. Overlay and Soft Light layers can be stacked together to make a nice shading effect.

Here I have used two soft light layers to make a nice shading effect for this palomino.


About Stacking
You can combine different layer modes by duplicating the greyscale and selecting layer modes in the dropdown box in the layers tab. Order matters! Here is a combination of Overlay 100% and Hard Light 30%.

And here is the same combination, but with hard light on the bottom and overlay on top.

Play around with the layer modes and stack orders until you find something you like! Here's a couple of examples I cooked up on the same palomino base:


As you can see, different combinations of layer modes give slightly different looks, so put on your artist hat and get creative :)

On White Markings
Typically, using pure white to colour pinto markings on greyscale bases looks blown-out and too bright. Try using a nice subtle shade of off white, beige, or very light grey to make your white markings look more realistic!

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 & 𝐔𝐒𝐄

Examples




HARPG Tracker

It's still in a bit of a wip stage, but here's a free thoroughbred base :)
If you like my work and want to see more of it here on the oekaki and see more updates to this base, please consider supporting me on my ko-fi! I can't link it bc cs rules but just so you know it exists and any support anyone can give would mean so much to me <3

Modern Thoroughbred Base [Free To Use]
What you can do with this base
You can:
✅Offer free colour-ins for others
✅Offer paid colour-ins for others (any payment type)
✅Sell character designs made on this base
✅Mod this base and re-post in editable oekaki for others to use (for adding you own accessories, pattern sets, etc)
✅Mod this base for personal use
✅Use for personal harpg games any other personal character use
✅Use for closed species/harpg adopts

What you can’t do with this base
❌You can’t use it for commercial purposes. If you’d like to license it for commercial use, contact me to arrange this :)
❓If in doubt, ask me! I will probably say yes <3

What you must do with this base
🩵Just credit me as the creator when someone asks.

Feel free to request specific base improvements in the comments x
I've made a discord server for anyone who wants to keep up with my projects and commission openings here: https://discord.gg/HcUkz7NT

Planned Add-Ons and Suggestions

• Saddles, tack, blankets, rugs, quarter sheets (racing tack)
• jump saddle, endurance/XC saddle, Dressage saddle (Eventing tack)
• Other tack (suggest specifics!)
• Finish the mane/tail sketches
• backgrounds (suggest ideas!)

𝐌𝐎𝐎𝐃𝐁𝐎𝐀𝐑𝐃

Location & Weather
Hertfordshire is a warm, southern county in the UK, based just north of London. It gets hot, dry summers (relative to the UK) with some rainfall typically in late July, and cool winters with occasional snowfall. The weather is generally considered pleasant and mild with average rainfall for the UK. Mediterranean crops like grapes and tomatoes can be grown with relative ease in this area of the UK.
Landscape
The area is relatively flat. There are of course hills and valleys, but they are not especially extreme; they are gentle, broad and undulating, with the highest point in Hertfordshire just 240m above sea level.

𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐀 & 𝐅𝐀𝐔𝐍𝐀

Common bird and small mammal species for this area include:
Grey squirrels, voles, mice, rats (more urban), occasionally stoats and weasels, badgers and foxes, hedgehogs, wild rabbits, roe deer, fallow deer, robins, various species of tits and finches (particularly blue tits and great tits), European magpies, pheasants, mallard ducks, mute swans, canada geese, blackbirds, crows, red kites and buzzards, wood pigeons and collared doves, rock pigeons (urban areas).
Common tree species for this area include:
Sycamore, weeping willow, silver birch, oak, beech (especially in whippendell woods), horse chestnut, walnut, ash, rowan, cypress, alder, poplar, and field maple.
Common wild flowering plants:
daffodils, daisies, dandelions, forget-me-not, bluebells, snowdrops.
Common agricultural crops and livestock:
Rapeseed, oat, wheat, barley, grass hays.
Sheep (various species but commonly Texel, Suffolk, Hampshire, Panama and Charolais (and more).
Cattle (commonly holstein, red and black Angus, Hereford, and Guernsey. Jersey cows are actually relatively rare for this area but possible if you want them!)

Here's some great depictions of what Hertfordshire looks like in the winter:
the greens will be muted and dark, particularly due to the evergreens being the only ones showing. Grasses are still lush and bright, if slightly muted. The browns and greys really come through on overcast days. Clouds and sunsets in winter typically get much more extravagant, with huge pillowy formations and a delicious array of sunset colours, moreso than in summer.

[nimmy]

just stunning!

[p-ond]

just stunning!

<3 thanks c:

[kaju]

how did u put a real life horse into oekaki hello??
this is so beautiful pond, all the detail <3

[p-ond]

how did u put a real life horse into oekaki hello??
this is so beautiful pond, all the detail <3

the drive to carry around a pocket sized horse was unreal

[Kagome963]

Beautiful!!

[*JACKAL*]

So stunning!

[Oddly Shaded]

I cannot wait to colour this!!

[noreptiles_]

forever blown away with your art~ reminds me so much of the old style horse isle horses <333

[Sunniedew]

gorgeous~!