Artist’s description from Deviantart:

Currently taking a break from doing art for the book and decided to play around with some sketches I had lying around. I decided to fully flesh this doodle out because quite a few folks has asked me about whether or not I was gonna draw Daring Do in the past, so here she is! My headcanon version of A.K Yearling, aka Daring Do.

As much as I liked the episode that featured A.K as an actual pony, what really bothered me about the character was that she was LITERALLY a recolor of Rainbow Dash, and that’s about it. The design was originally fine with me the first time they introduced her because Dash was reading the book and, because of that, it made sense that she looked like Dashie ‘cause it felt like she was pretty much seeing the adventure through Daring’s eyes. But if they were gonna make her an actual, living pony, I think they could have done something a little more than just change her color palette. :/ So I made sure she didn’t look like a carbon copy of RD.

What I did was take a picture of J.K Rowling and loosely base A.K’s face off of hers (specifically her eyes and mouth; I just had to add those laugh lines). I also gave her some markings just ‘cause I can. As a seasoned adventurer and explorer, I made A.K taller, heavier, and more muscular than what RD is, and her wings are larger. I wanted her to look as wise and as experienced as she seemed in the show, someone that could really wow RD because she just seemed larger than life itself, and still haven’t lost her edge despite being nearly 50.

As a better comparison, I added the headcanon drawing I did of RD a while ago and put them side by side; you can see it HERE

And finally, some headcanon on her history:

Okay, so for the headcanon on this character. This is completely off the top of my head so bear with me here. :/

A.K Yearling’s full name is Atlas Kiera Yearling, and she is a mare that is initially an archaeologist and an author of textbooks. Originally the digs and sites she’s been to around the world were, of course, interesting, but none really had any of the huge adventuring and possible conspiracy elements that her adventure for the artifact the Sapphire Stone did. This was basically the very first adventure that really put her at odds against Ahuizotl, her efforts in retrieving the artifact both saving the world and putting a wrench in the creature’s plans.

It’s from here on out that more adventures similar to this one began to dominate her archaeology career, her skill-set becoming more and more sought out when it came to discovering and retrieving very rare or difficult-to-locate artifacts. It eventually got to a point where A.K began conducting her business in solitude, with only her contractor and perhaps the occasional aid knowing of her whereabouts. These journeys would more on one occasion lead her to an artifact Ahuizotl had plans of stealing himself, and eventually it became something of a strange routine in an attempt to best the other; one for the sake of discovering, the other for the use of artifacts in an attempt to further ill-willed motives. The two share a grudging respect for the other due to their prowess in the field, but that’s about it.

These adventures happened often enough that, during her downtime, Atlas began writing stories based on her life under the pen-name A.K Yearling. The stories, when finally published, were such a large hit that it eventually became a series with the main Heroine dubbed Daring Do, an alias she used during her first encounter with Ahuizotl so he wouldn’t know of her actual name.

Until then, if you have any questions feel free to ask. And thanks for droppin’ by! ^.