One of those pieces that took at least twice as long as I was hoping it would o.O

Couple things ...

- Her her hair is usually a solid mass with stars in it, but since I like rendering hair, but I also wanted it to be mostly accurate, I kind of split the difference and made the hair "realistic" near the scalp, then had it transition to how it looks in the show. I've seen some artists render hair realistically, and it can be beautiful, but the lack of accuracy tends to bug me a little.

- I originally wanted it to look like she's raising the sun with her horn, but the end result looks more like she's creating the sun with her horn, so I made it look like the sun and daytime sky were emitting from her horn, hence why it's darker at the bottom (still night in that area or something). Works for me--I'm not going for accuracy so much as a neat concept.

- Cutie mark was really just taken from her MLP wikia page, then I turned up the contrast and added an outline, etc--didn't really see the point in drawing it from scratch, since it's a side view of her anyway. Source:
http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/Celestia
(click on "[show]" below the main image).

- Just for fun, I uploaded a phase the image was in when I made a mistake and flood-filled over the black lines: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7849259

EDIT 6/10/12 - There is now a companion piece, Raising The Moon. Check it out here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8163165/