My OCD has paid off here then About the references, I used to when I fist started out. Now I can pretty much draw all of the main 6 from memory, which I did in these. There are still some positions that I'm still practising though
Dude. These proportions are indistinguishable from vector traces. If your eyes are this good, you should be doing hyper-realism and make people drop dead with your ludicrously accurate eyes.
At some point people might start wonder if you traced your work. I just noticed there's a past drawing of Applejack in the same drawing and they are nearly identical. Anyone that good at replicating something very close should not have a reason why they're using it on cartoon ponies... why not say... realism or at least come up with your own anatomical style of pony? I consider it potential being wasted.
Both the sketches and that AJ picture you mentioned were created for a A-Level project I was doing. The project had to have a development element involved so I used that sketch and tried to make it more realistic if that answers that. About the realism, I have to practice a lot more with that. Being able to replicate shapes and forms are a lot different to colour and perfect detail. Ponies are not the most detailed cartoons in the world :')