Last month, I made a Blathering post called Don't Ask Me To Draw A Horse explaining how I somehow missed the period in every girl's life where they get obsessed with horses. And unicorns. And make-up and fashion and shopping for clothes, for that matter, but that's another Blathering.

My friend Michelle Dockrey and I decided to become Artsygoal partners. Michelle, a.k.a. "Vixy," not only has an amazing voice (see YouTube video at the bottom of this Blathering) but also is a talented artist; check out her Flickr page. Anyway, one of MY Artsygoals was to finally learn how to draw a horse.

Not just copying or tracing a horse, not just the standard "horse or horse head in profile", but to be able to sit down and draw a horse from various positions without a reference. Here's what my horses currently look like, if I try drawing them without reference / copying:

The picture above was taken by Erin after I drew a sample horse on a tablecloth to prove to some friends that I can't draw horses. My horses tend to look like crosses between dogs and deer. Sort of.

Well, that's gonna change!

I tried working on my Artsygoals in private at first but procrastinated terribly. So I've decided to put my efforts, no matter how humiliating, in public. I figure that'll help motivate me to improve more quickly. :-)

On Friday night, I decided to make my first attempt (as an adult) to really draw a horse. I'm figuring one of the best ways to improve is to do a ton of reference copying (not tracing) in the beginning. Because I don't have access to live models, I found a photo online to use as reference.

I do all my drawing on my MacBook with Corel Painter X, using a Wacom Intuos Artpad.

I found this first sketch REALLY hard! It's clear that I need a lot more practice before I'm going to get the proportions correct. My artist friend, Beckett Gladney, has recommended The Art of Animal Drawing by Ken Hultgren, so I ordered that through Amazon.ca. I've also ordered Perspective Made Easy by Ernest R. Norling (one of my other Artsygoals is to improve my perspective drawing) and Draw Horses With Sam Savitt by Sam Savitt.

Above, I've attempted to fix the sketch somewhat. A tad better, but more pony-like than horse-like. I was strongly tempted to scrap the picture at this point because the sketching part was so hard and the results so disappointing. But I've been procrastinating making my first attempt way too long, so I figured I may as well commit.

Above: Made some more fixes and also added colour. Doesn't bear a great resemblance to the original photo, but at least it's a bit closer to looking like a horse than my usual dog-pony attempts. It's clear I have a lot to learn about how to use shading to show musculature; this would help me in other drawings as well, of course. The shading above the hind leg, for example, makes it look as if there's a weird indentation, which wasn't my intention at all. Lots to learn!

And this is Horse Attempt #2. This time I used this photo as reference. I wanted another simple profile shot, but in a different position.

Above: after the initial very rough sketch with a light gray Pencil brush in Corel Painter, I did one in slightly heavier lines in a separate layer.

I added some background colour using the Pen tool with Flat Color variant, and deleted the sketch layer. I kept each of the different greens in a separate layer to make it easier to work on them later.

Added some shading to the horse by adding colour with the Pen tool (Flat Color variant) then using a Blender brush (Soft Blender Stump variant) to blend the edges of the shading. I constantly change the size of the brushes using the square bracket key shortcut.

The shading went a bit better this time. I think for my next attempts, however, I'm going to focus on details of different parts of the horse. I'm collecting all my attempts in chronological order in my Flickr set, Don't Ask Me To Draw A Horse.

Thanks to my Artsygoal pal, Michelle Dockrey, for inspiring me!

Below: the YouTube video below uses Michelle's "Mal's Song," as the soundtrack; her song cleverly integrates part of the theme song from Firefly. Michelle Dockrey and Tony Fabris (who is playing guitar) are Guests of Honour at next year's FilKONtario.

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