If you have ever found yourself being in awe of horses due to their beautiful mane, long tails, muscular torsos, thick necks, impressive speed, their potential to be fearless in the face of danger and the fact that they are social animals who consistently live in groups known as herds, then you’re in for some fun. In these tutorials, we would be indulging your love for horses by drawing a horse in three ways. The first horse would be drawn standing, the second would take the form of a Chibi cute horse and the third would be drawn running. The more at ease you are with each step of the tutorials, the more natural your drawing will appear. Also, we would begin each tutorial by first drawing a dummy. The dummies would serve as bases upon which we would put together our final sketch. Ready? Let’s rock and roll!.
Tutorial 1: How To Draw A Horse Standing
Getting a pretty amazing drawing of a standing horse would require you following eleven easy steps.
- Drawing the body
- Drawing the front legs
- Drawing the back legs
- Drawing the tail
- Drawing the Head
- Drawing the mane on the neck´s crest
- Drawing The facial features
- Drawing the final line art
- Painting the base color
- Painting the shadows
- Painting the lights
Step 1: Drawing The Body
Using the above picture as a guide, the horse’s body would be depicted by two long and curvy horizontal lines and two short and curvy vertical lines. The back of the body should be drawn slightly smaller in size than the front of the body.
Step 2: Drawing The front Legs
The horses front legs would start off with a small circle as seen in the image. From beneath the circle, the outer leg would take the form of two short vertical lines and should be drawn as though drawing a pipe. With that drawn, go on to draw the lower leg by first drawing a circle and then two short vertical lines. Complete the leg by drawing a third circle. Using the image as a guide, repeat the process for the second front leg. Lastly, draw a short vertical line in the horse’s body just above the start of the front legs.
Step 3: Drawing The Back Legs
To start this off, draw a big circle that begins from the top of the rear of the body. The circle should then extend out of the body. Using the image as a guide, draw a short and slanted vertical line that cuts through the lower part of the circle and connects to the start of the horse’s outer leg. The outer leg should extend backward. Now draw two short vertical lines that slant backward as though drawing a pipe. The pipes should reduce in size as they get to the midsection of the horse’s leg. Then draw another circle and short pipes that also start big and gradually reduce. End the legs by drawing another circle. Refer to the picture again, and draw the horses second back leg using the same process.
Step 4: Drawing The Tail
The horses tail should be drawn resting at the back of its body. A vertical line that starts from the top of the horse’s body and ends at the midsection of the horse’s legs would do. Finally using short zigzag strokes draw the tip of the tail between our characters back legs.
Step 5: Drawing The Head
Using the image as a guide, two long and curved horizontal lines should be drawn. This would serve as our horses long and thick neck. At the end of the neck, draw the head as seen. Start it off big, and reduce its size as you get to the mouth region. When there, draw a small circle. Draw another circle inside the horses head as seen. Then draw the ear at the top of the head. It should be small and pointed.
Step 6: Drawing The Mane On The Necks Crest
The mane should be drawn as a small elevation above the neck and should be depicted by short and slanted strokes.
Step 7: Drawing The Facial Features
Now draw the facial features as seen in the above picture
Step 8: Drawing The Final Line Art
At this point, we would fade out the dummy slightly and use the traces left to draw the final lines seen in the image.
Step 9: Painting The Base Colors
Here’s the point we add some color to our drawing. So grab your brown and black and start painting a stunner.
Step 10: Painting The Shadows
This is basically painting the dark spots seen in the above picture. These are the neck, the rear of the horse, the legs, the stomach and the dark patch on the face.
Step 11: Painting The Lights
Painting the lights is simply painting in your drawing the lighter spots shown the image. So grab your lighter brown paint and simply touch those lighter spots on the horse’s body.
Tutorial 2: How To Draw A Chibi/ Cute Horse
Chibi/cute horse drawing is basically drawing a horse in an anime or cartoon form and we would do this in ten steps.
- Drawing the Body
- Drawing the Front Legs
- Drawing the Back Legs
- Drawing the Tail and Head
- Drawing the Mane and Facial features
- Drawing the Final line art
- Painting the Base Colours
- Painting the Shadows
- Painting The Lights
- Painting the final patches
Step 1: Drawing The Body
The horse’s body should be drawn with two long, curvy and widely separated horizontal lines. Two short and curved vertical lines should then connect the horizontal lines. A third vertical line should be drawn inside the body. It should be precisely at the front as depicted in the image.
Step 2: Drawing The Front Legs
Next, draw the legs as shown in the image. The leg closer to the viewers should be raised with the other placed firmly on the ground.
Step 3: Drawing The Back Legs
The back legs should be drawn slightly distant from each other but before starting, using the image as a guide, draw a curved vertical line at the rear of the horse’s body. Having drawn that, each leg should then start small and gradually get bigger as seen in the image.
Step 4: Drawing The Tail And The Head
Our horses head would be drawn turned back as seen in the above picture. Be sure to include the ears and the mouth. Next, the tail would take the form of two curved vertical lines. It should start small and gradually get wider and then should get smaller towards the tips. With that done, complete the tail by drawing two short vertical lines at its tip.
Step 5: Drawing The Mane And Facial Features
The mane should be drawn as a slight elevation that begins from its forehead to the end of its neck. Curved lines as shown in the image should be used. With that done, draw the facial features of our Chibi horse. This would essentially be the eyes, nose, and mouth.
Step 6: Drawing The Final Line Art
At this point, we would fade out the dummy slightly and use the traces left to draw the final lines seen in the image.
Step 7: Painting The Base Colors
Here’s where we amp our drawing with the base colors. So pull out your colors as seen in the picture and let’s get painting!.
Step 8: Painting The Shadows
This is basically painting dark spots in the picture such as the legs, the lower part of the body and a small area beneath the horses head.
Step 9: Painting The Light
For the light painting, we would be focusing on areas seemingly hit by light rays in the above picture. Such areas can be seen on the mane, the face, the tail, and the top and front view of the body. So get lighter shades of the base colors in those areas and paint away.
Step 10: Painting The Final Patches
This simply requires painting the four dark patches seen at the top of our horse’s body.
Tutorial 3: How To Draw A Horse Racing
For this tutorial, our horse would be drawn racing and we would do this in twelve steps.
- Drawing the Body
- Drawing the Front Legs
- Drawing the Back Legs
- Drawing the Tail.
- Drawing the head
- Drawing the mane.
- Drawing the facial features.
- Drawing the final line art.
- Painting the tail, mane, and hoofs
- Painting the body
- Painting the shadows.
- Painting the lights.
Step 1: Drawing The Body
Using the above picture as a guide, the horse’s body would be depicted by two long and curvy horizontal lines that are slightly distant from each other. Two short and curvy vertical lines should then be drawn to connect them. The back of the body should be drawn slightly smaller in size than the front of the body.
Step 2: Drawing The Front Legs
Our characters legs would be drawn bent in and the 3/4 drawing scale would be used. This means that the leg facing the viewers would be bigger in size than the other leg. Also, make sure you include all the lines and circles as seen in the image.
Step 3: Drawing The Back Legs
For the back legs, the 3/4 drawing scale would also be used. Using the image as a guide, the leg facing the viewers should start off big from the body of the horse and should get smaller as it gets to the hoof.
Step 4: Drawing The Tail.
Our characters tail would be drawn raised as though being blown by the wind. Using two horizontal lines, the tail should start off small and should get bigger as it advances to the tip. At the tip, short horizontal strokes should be drawn.
Step 5: Drawing The Head
When drawing the head, two long vertical lines should be drawn. This would serve as our horses long and thick neck. At the end of the neck, draw the head as seen. Start it off big, and reduce its size as you get to the mouth region. When there, draw a small circle. Draw another circle inside the horses head as seen. Then draw the ear at the top of the head. It should be small and pointed.
Step 6: Drawing The Mane
The mane should be drawn raised as though being blown by the wind. It should start off from the head and should go all the way down the neck. Also short vertical lines should be drawn through the tip of the mane.
Step 7: Drawing The Facial Features
Here’s where you include the facial features as seen in the picture.
Step 8: Drawing The Final Line Art
Now we would slightly fade out the dummy and using the picture and the traces left as a guide, we would draw our final sketch also known as the final line art.
Step 9: Painting The Tail, Mane And Hoofs
The tail, mane and hoofs would be painted black.
Step 10: Painting The Body
Our characters body would be painted dark brown as seen in the picture.
Step 11: Painting The Shadows
This basically makes your drawing more realistic and these shadows are dark spots as depicted in the above image. They can be spotted on the legs, the upper part of the neck and some parts of the body. So using the darkest shade of brown you have, paint the shadows.
Step 12: Painting The Lights
Here’s where you grab some glow in the dark powder, mix it with your lightest shade of brown and paint the light spots of the horse as seen in the picture above.
Finally, we have come to the close of our tutorials. However, to sharpen up your abilities, you should repeat the process a couple of times. Soon enough you’ll be amazing at character drawing and won’t need a tutorial.
