Christmas gift for a friend of mine and easily my best piece so far.

I learned so much from this! And I only procrastinated two short times!
After doing the shadowing, I had to re-draw some of the scales. The mane wasn't that bad.
I'm REALLY annoyed at Photoshop for not having ANY brushes that DON'T fade on the edges.

No special brushes used.
Done in PS Elements 9.
Time: Somewhere between five and seven hours.