A cantering horse
This time I got my inspiration from a penny magazine. Those magazines always contain A3 posters of beautiful horses, this poster depicted a cantering horse on the beach. I expected drawing this horse to be a challenge, because of the movement.
I started of sketching the horse, and in the end was pretty satisfied with the sketch I had made. I did struggle a little with the front legs, and was not totally sure about how to draw them. Those legs are truly pointed to the front, in a sense jumping “out of” the paper, which made it difficult. In the end I a pretty fond of the way the front legs worked out. Looking back now I would have drawn the hind leg more slant, since that would have increased the feeling of movement.
When the sketch was ready I started coloring the coat one main brown shade. After that I added more shades, and shadows. Then I colored the shadows on the legs, using grey. I find coloring one of the hardest tasks to fulfill, because I never know what color to pick, and it is almost impossible to create the exact same color as the one in real life, or an image.
Afterwards, I continued on the horse’s head, which is my favorite part. The head is most defining for an animal, and when the head is drawn it really begins to look like a horse. I also enjoyed coloring the manes, because of the beautiful shape they are in. The manes give the impression of the wind going trough, and thus the impression of motion. The manes therefore played a big role in bringing this horse to live, making it seem real and moving.
Last of all I only had one task left to do: draw the windblown sand, which gets set in motion by the hooves of this wonderful animal. I had no experience with drawing sand, let along windblown sand, and struggled a little with this part of the drawing. I could not find the right color, and am not completely satisfied with the structure either, but in the end I decided the sand to be good enough. Which gives us the end result, as can be seen down here.
I placed my own half drawing besides the real photo and as it turns out that fitted rather well! What do you think?
