Tried a pencil line style, as I've always admired the style of NCMares .

Please note that this is very, very far below his quality of work, neither did this one come close to his style.

Although it did not turn out well, I've learned some lessons and hopefully you may find them useful:

(1) This style is not very well suited for dramatical lighting, as placing pencil lines on the highlighs will make it look dirty, but placing lines in the shadows will distract the viewer

(2) If you take a careful look at NCMares' works, you'll notice that he actually used very little amount of pencil lines. Mainly just for outlines and a very subtle texture in the shadows, most of his shading is actually done with brushes and textures, not by crosshatching with pencils.

TL;DR: Use pencil lines very sparingly, don't put them in shadows lest you want to get messy.

MLP (c) Hasbro