The MLP Arena
Creativity => Arts & Crafts Corral => Topic started by: Lady Frostbite on June 10, 2019, 03:28:06 PM
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I have an image I am burning to draw, but I have zero experience in drawing horses. I find their faces, especially at odd or unusual angles, hard to capture!
Anyone got any tips for drawing realistic or semi-realistic (i.e. simplified) horses? Unusual angles like rearing, throwing back the head, viewing 1/4 from the back, any body angles apart from side angles would be appreciated! Any tutorials? Secret hacks? (Especially for nostrils, they look so odd wheb I draw them!
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I found trying to draw horses/equines a difficult task when starting out. It still causes me some level of grief when it doesn’t look quite right, but it is much better compared to my start. I don’t have the drawings on me at the moment, but I can probably walk your through some of them. For now, try breaking it up into simple shapes. I find heads a lot easier when I break it into a large circle and a smaller one for the muzzle.
In short, try breaking a reference image of what you want apart, and try to replicate. Horses are difficult, but practice does make purpose.
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Secret hacks? (Especially for nostrils, they look so odd wheb I draw them!
Secret hacks, lol!
I have found that the nostrils are quite important to get right, and looking at examples really help. Take an image from the web of an MLP character, overlap the nostrils with the same color as the body of the pony, then try to draw in the nostrils yourself (not just as you remembered them but how you feel you would draw them, what you can see in your mind). Do the same exercise but from other images with different angles. When you feel you got it right, which I think is important as an artist, to feel that you did it right, not what you think others will think, then you are good to go.
If you want to get angles right, just draw like crazy! And I mean crazy... Draw things in private, anything even if it could be considered wrong. I pushed my luck by drawing really disturbing pictures at a friends house, to see how far I could go. It became a thing (and many people have seen them and praised them, including a book publisher). And I could really feel I got more and more of the angles and perspective right. Then it was much easier to draw "normal" thing including MLP characters. It kinda takes the pressure off when you train your drawing with something that you don't really care much for if it gets wrong. And drawing, realistic or not, does help. :)
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Practice a lot, and draw from reference.
Breaking it up into shapes is super helpful, too. I gogoled horse tutorial, and I think I've had this book (albeit not in japanese), and found it helpful for understanding horses!
http://selfiegrades.com/wp-content/uploads/how-to-draw-horse-tutorial-reference-book-anime-books-anime-drawing-tutorial-book.gif (http://selfiegrades.com/wp-content/uploads/how-to-draw-horse-tutorial-reference-book-anime-books-anime-drawing-tutorial-book.gif)
(it's just a spread of the book, I think it's called How To Draw - Horse Tutorial Reference Book)
I also find studying how the muscles and skeleton works is good.
But yeah, my secret tip is to study horses and sketch, sketch, sketch! Like mlptfan said, sketch without the intention to show it anywhere. Just practice the shapes and really understand how the anatomy works. :)