I annoyed myself with how small I drew this. First off it's a whole different difficulty level but my eyes get all crossed and my neck starts stiffing. I started the drawing with the outlines of the woman and horse and didn't worry about the water at all. Once I was done with that I worked my way down starting with the hair and finished by shading the horse's backside. The horse was a little tricky as most of it was hidden in shadow in the semi-low resolution photo. I worked a lot of it out by memory of the previous horse I drew. One of my least favorite things to draw is water because I never know to get into it. I started by placing the shadows and worked out the rest somehow.
Comments
my favorite kind of spray is krylon crystal clear acrylic spray. with enough layers i can eat a spaghetti dinner using a drawing as a plate and then run it through the dishwasher and it will still be protected. but the shine it creates makes art photography difficult.
i have found that pastel never really gets dark enough, which may be good if you don't like dark images. it gets everywhere. and it is a bitch to protect. i stay away from pastel. pastel pencils are nice, though. charcoal pencils are my favorite on a drawing i am going to spend a lot of time on. for sketching i use cheap plastic bic mechanical pencils. they give me a good range of values and never need sharpening. also, with retractible leads, they keep clean.