Drawing a Horse's Head in 3/4 View - Sketching Tutorial

Jacquelin Vanderwood July 15, 2004   1 Here is a basic way of drawing a horse's head in 3/4 view. We start by drawing the guidelines for frontal part of the head.   2 Then in this step we add the line for the back of the neck, lines for the cheek of the head and bone area of the side of the face where the eye will live, and the oval area where the eyes will sit.   3 Continuing on, we now create the oval above the head where the ears will appear. In the horizontal oval we draw a circle which represents the eye. In the snout area we draw the shape of a 6 which will represent the nostril. The large muscle area on the side of the head is drawn in as a lopsided U, and then finally the lines for the neck area.   4 Here we draw in the representation of the ears, outline more of the eye and the line above it. Next we draw out the line that will represent the upper lip of the mouth and the under part of the chin.   5 Here is our final outline of the head. In the ear area we draw in the folds of the ears, add in where the mane will sit, then delineate more of the area of the eye, add in a line on the neck which represent more of the muscle of the neck, and then draw the lower lip. Now we are ready to draw in the details that will make this look more like a horse.   6 Here I've sketched in the actual outline of the horse's head with another color.   7 I used colored pencils to fill in the horse by layering colors. I first blocked in the actual colors that would be in the areas and then used white in most of the area other than the shadow areas to blend. I continued to layer in colors and every so often used white or egg cream color to blend. In the dark areas I layered down to dark until it looked like I wanted it to look. At the end I used white by pressing hard to build up the highlight areas. Finally I selected black sharpened, and used it lightly to darken the shadow areas. It's a matter of layering...layering into dark and building up into light.   Copyright 1998-2004, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved