#how to draw horses

[skycowboys]

Hey!!! You made a "how to draw wings" sheet, but— how on Earth do you draw horse!?!? The bane of every artists existence

Yeahhh horses are hard. They have lots of little nuances on top of complex anatomy and weird ass shapes (literally and figuratively). Drawing them requires lots and lots of practice. And this is like...entire art book levels of subject matter but here are a few tricks that I've picked up over time -

Key body shapes - shoulder, barrel, hip

I won't go too far into this one because Ken Hultgren does a much better job in his book The Art of Animal Drawing. But TL;DR - a horse's body has three main masses - the shoulder, the barrel, and the hip. Each one is tricky to draw on it's own since they're all weird shapes, but it's helpful to me to break a horse body down into simpler terms.

Key muscle masses

When I draw horses, I like to emphasis curves vs straights. Horses have that built in naturally as their body is often either "pure muscle" or "pure bone". There's some really nice details at the intersections of body parts, like at the front elbow and behind the ears along the neck (aka the "poll") where there's highly definable muscle groups that can help with visual clarity.

Fun fact, young horses grow hip-first. The horse in the photo above is 8 years old. That same horse at 4 years is below. Cracks me up how much taller his hip was at the time.

Ok so the muscles on the front legs combined with the shoulder mass is a fave combo of mine. The shoulder mass itself is something that I've found that is particularly horse-ish. For me, it's a pretty big visual signifier - almost more important than the neck. You can show a lot of tension/action in the body with the shoulder depending how you simplify it. Horses use their shoulders A LOT (too much if you ask any dressage rider or reiner), so emphasizing the shoulder can make a horse more expressive.

Legs. Oh heavens, the legs.

Yeah ok so again, Hultgren goes into fantastic detail on legs and hooves (I still follow how he simplifies hooves to this day my gosh that guy is a genius), but I often break them down like this for quick sketching. Are horse's legs realistically this emphasized? No, but I like the visual language; believable but expressive. This can apply to any size/shape from arabians to drafts.

And finally...

A few head details -

Overall horses have SO many variables. The fun part about that is that they're highly customizable and able to be endlessly stylized. The tough part is that they're hard to draw strictly because of all of the little things to keep track of to make sure the horse reads as "horse".

And so because third time's the charm, Ken Hultgren's Art of Animal Drawing really is one of the best I've seen for breaking down, simplifying, and applying horse anatomy to active drawings.

But most of all, the more you draw horses the easier they'll be.

–

Discord | Patreon | Art Prints

[wandaluvstacos]

another day, another problem I see with people drawing cowboys.

These are Western saddle stirrups (the stirrups a cowboy would ride with). They're typically made of wood, sometimes metal, but they have a distinctive shape.

THESE are English stirrups. They're often called "irons", for obvious reasons. They're almost always made from metal. I've never seen any made from wood:

Anyway, don't draw your cowboys in English saddles. I guess an Australian cowboy might ride with more English-type stirrups, but I figure most people who draw cowboys are doing the American ones.

This is an Australian stock saddle with English style irons (some have horns, some don't).

This is an American western saddle.

[canisalbus]

These started out as MLP versions of the dog lads but quickly got away from me and became just their own thing. Machete is a medieval unicorn and Vasco was inspired by Renaissance tack and carousel horses.

[proxycrit]

(I point. Gently, in the voice of somebody who’s mind touched by the outer gods, i whisper truth in your ears:

Your honor the horses are now lesbians

(Anyways here’s the designs)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The musical episode.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[lylahammar]

Zorella, the centaur pop queen ✨

Thank you to everyone who helped me by voting on her final design in the poll from last week! I'm so so so happy with how she turned out 🥰

[finngualart]

drawing eight legs on a horse is so silly and annoying and i was thinking about how they could be more like... spooky astrally projected legs that only appear when said horse is walking between worlds

[aviul]

fish horse

[leafspiritz]

🌾

[fence-time]

More cowboy au drawins :3

[camzkoa]

[snacobie]

Do you guys remember that one time drizzt had a horse girl moment with a unicorn in Starless Night because I do

[sraksha]

Oh, your art is so lovely that it's hard to think of just one request! The first one that came to mind was Time and Wild bonding over epona's song? I'm sure Wild would hum it after hearing Kass play it so often at the stables and tip Time off that he knows it

I don't think Wild is related to Time and Twi, but it's a valid question if Epona's Song is something that's passed down in the family.

[transformers-synergize]

on cybertron everyone could talk even feral cassette bots so it's pretty weird how on earth it's only really humans who can speak

sorry for the messy background and rendering its been like 4 months since I did anything rendered

[proxycrit]

A doodle page of the funny horses! Look at em gooo

(Based on my hot take on the gang’s designs!)

[amielot]

Rainfall