shire horses to be exact
I love horses, always have done, and part of me feels sad that at the time when I was in my “horse era”, there wasn’t the knowledge and information about how best to ride and raise horses that there is now, so my experiences back then were much more about control and domination over the animal, which never really chimed with me. Anyway, I now get the chance to see lots of footage of happy horses and wild horses and rewilding projects with horses too.
I have never been very good at drawing them though, and my Draw 50 book has been really useful, but I’ve only used that to draw them as per the instructions. I decided to see if I could use the same technique of blocking shapes to draw any horse. I decided to focus on shire horses as they have thick coats and feathery legs, so I figured they would be a bit more forgiving to draw as from the knees down, they are basically triangular and their hairy jaw means their heads are basically rectangular.
I used paused video as my reference images so as to avoid any AI-ness, and also the weird fisheye effect that photos with an iPhone tend to have. I sketched them in 2H pencil by looking at the proportions and some chunky muscles, as well as remembering to line up their knees, hocks and fetlocks. Once happy, I went over the lines with my Ellington Pen in Rouge Opéra ink. I really like how they turned out:
I’ve still got some more of my own paintings to finish as well as more birds for Mossy Earth but I’m definitely going to keep on practising these as I’m really pleased with my progress.
