Looking for critique on this, I know the grounding sucks lol.

I can immediately tell which stock you used. If I were you, I would redraw it, try a colour change, at least edit it a bit. Add some mane. The horse looks a bit too big-try making the image bigger or the horse smaller, and add some other details.The horse is too bright, darken it a bit. The forelock is barely visible. You shouldn't have used that eraser on the hooves, instead you should have used a hard-edged eraser and cut a pattern. I see you were probably trying for a more saturated look with the shading, but you shouldn't have. The light is way too varied, and on the right side of the chest it looks as if the light is pointing straight at it, when really the shading should all be coming from the side. There's too much definition on the horse's face and not enough on the body. The horse has too much of a purple tint while the snow is blue. You need to work on grounding the horse more.

Double post

So, I am new to manips and decided to make a huge challenge for my self. I took a bay horse and painted him over with a palomino color and then started adding shadows, I am going to smudge them of course and then add highlights before making the details and painting the hair. I want your thoughts!

You're going to need to place your shadows/highlights a lot more carefully and follow the correct muscling patterns. It'll take a lot more shadowing then you have now as well. I recommend paying close attention to the stock you're working with and following the definition lines of it when you're repainting in all of this shadowing. Multiple colors is nice as well.

Here's another piece for ya, I have not don't the hair or the grounding yet. I loved the horse image but after placing it only bgand starting to cut it out, the image was super pixeled, so I completely repainted it, I did some smudging and would like some opinions.

Edit: I'm and idiot and forgot the image

Tangle | I believe it's the lighting and shadow. Shadows aren't harsh enough for the backlight, and there isn't enough light silhouetting the horses (Baby's legs) to really match the light sourse. The baby and mom's shadows should probably be redrawn on as they are only on the left side of the cuts. I think that's porbably why it doesn't appear right.

HMH | So, I see what you were getting at, but the horse looks very unnatural where the muscles were repainted. It's very harsh and then goes into a blinding white. Maybe try to blend out some of the harsher shadows and then darken them up? (I've never gone as far as repainting the entire horse, so I'm not sure what all would go into the process or where I might help in that process. >.<)

Thank you CC! Just realized I forgot to make the lighting layers visible again, I get what you're saying about the foal's legs.

rip this to shreds.