How to draw a Horse - Observation to Illustration

1. Intro: Hi, Welcome back to another Skillshare. My name is Holly soap plus I'm an artist, author and illustrator, and I loved drawing animals. This Skillshare is part of the series or the same, creating cold observation to illustration. And in today's session, we are going to be drawing horses. I'm going to talk you through how to draw horse, which I know can feel monumentally challenging at times, but they say horses and bicycles, most difficult things to draw. I'm going to talk you through how horses put together and how best to take on that challenge of drawing them. We're then going to be a bit playful with those drawings and start to develop a feeling of character, which we're then going to take forward to our last lesson, which is to create a finished illustration of a horse that we've developed from our original observational drawings. I really hope you're going to enjoy this session. If I'm drawing observations, that illustration is something that appeals to you, you can check out my other Skillshare of how to draw a Guinea pig observation to illustration. Crack on. Let's get on to the exercise. 2. What tools: Okay, so for this first stage, you simply need paper and pencil. You can actually draw with whatever you like. The actual act of drawing is what's important. It doesn't really matter what you're using. But for this first challenge, are going to use a paper and pencil. I'll put a list in the contents of what things you might need it for this whole course. But right now, grab your pencil and your paper, and let's get drawing. There'll be an image up in the top corner that I'm going to be drawing from and that you can use as well to draw along with. I'll also provide the full size image in the resources section to see you can have that at a bigger scale as well. Let's get drawing. 3. Let's draw some horses!: Okay, so we've got a picture of a horse. And we're going to just start by having a really basic lit at night. You probably get bored of me saying this. But if you're new to drawing or even if you're not, if you're new to drawing a certain subjects, the best I'm going to do is look for the shapes. So I'm being really basic here. Circled bomb, kind of a slightly longer square on the body. And then horses, they've got you can see there's an angle, there's a line that comes across the shoulders. It's more like a triangle that's there. The neck again is like a triangle that kinda comes forward like this. And then we've got another circle here, the cheek, the cheekbone is really big, but it gives a really great place to get a good focal point for your drawing when you're looking at the face. So nice, big, cheaper and it's bigger than you think. And then go raise straight face and it kinda comes down. But the undid your lower mandible starts to taper end and it doesn't come to a total point there. There might be sort of squared off. Essentially. You're kind of coming down not quite a triangle. And then they've got crap boxy square at the end here. Now, at this point, I can see that I've not made his chest deep enough, so it's nice and easy. We can just extend that. So we've got this triangle here. Tommy. You can start to, You can start to add depth and flavor, I guess, to your drawing as you go along. Here, let's look at those legs, the legs that everybody kind of gets really worried about it. So we've got this triangle. If you think about things like joints, they've got the elbow here. And then if you look at him, There's a nice kind of triangular shape at the top of his leg and it kinda goes up. So there you go. That's nice. Easy point of reference. And again, the leg tapers down, it doesn't go parallel to each other. There's a slight tapering. Their knee from this angle is a bit like a sideways diamond. From the fronts. Their knee is well, I tend to do it as a oval, but essentially it's like that when you're looking straight on. And that's because they have their knees made up of these bones, 366 bonds at the front and that kinda come together like that. And then there's a spirit the back. So you can see these bones they meet, they're there and then this is a slight kicking out there. Not much. I find it helps to kind of understand a little bit about how things are put together. So we come straight down and nice big bones here. There's huge bones here. And then two disjoint here. This is the fetlock joint. And again, find it easiest to think of it as a bit of a circle. But again, it's got a spur bone here that there's different bones in here, but there's one that kicks out. So you can see on him, he has had his legs trimmed. If he was in his natural state, he would have very hairy legs. We wouldn't have to bother with all this detail. But here he is putting in this other joint here, and then it's coming forward. If you try and think of balance. If we just went straight down, he'd like topple. The waste of them goes comes forward and then it's cushioned. Didn't see this. Again, the foot angles forward and different horses, different shaped feet, but that tends to, you know, the basic rules apply. It's narrower, shallower rather at the back. And then de France so that you've got this angle. In this chest coming forward and you turn this angle, you are not really seeing a huge amount. You're really just seeing a little bit of the other fits. So we can just pop that in there. And as we're drawing, we can kinda go on and we're going to tackle those back legs. Makes sure maybe he's bottom needs to be a bit bigger. It's okay to not get things right the first time. Don't get frustrated with yourself or give up on a drawing because you are not making the right lines. First-time. It doesn't matter. You don't need to be rubbing things. I mean, I've made all sorts mistakes already, but I just keep just keep going. Okay. So we are back to this area here, stifle and you can see it's got this little curve there. And he's a boy, so we've got that there. Now. Their bottom. So when we start to do this hind leg, it helps to start to shape the bottom a little bit. So he's got the best peachy bomb ever. But even though it's peachy, it still has angles rather than being a true circle. So if we're looking all the time at my reference image, and I can see that we need to pull in this angle here and here. If you're ever not sure of an angle, don't be afraid to just use your pencil a bit like a cliched held at arm's length and hold up at your, your drawing, sorry, at your reference image. And then take that day into your drawing to check your angles is a really useful and great, reliable way of testing. You're testing your angles. Okay? So he's standing on a slight angle here, but ultimately you want his his knee his his front knee. I'm going to check with my check with the top of this knee here. Needs to be in line with the front of his hock here. So that's about right. And again, we're tapering down. I know he's on a slight angle here, so with this leg, so we've got an extra challenge. Essentially, a horse's back leg goes then it goes out. In this area here is called the hawk because i and then it goes straight, comes down, and then you've got all the happening here. Slightly disproportionate. You get the idea. So here's this twisted around a bit. So we're just going to be dealing with that by again, just looking at the shapes that we see. So I'm seeing this triangular, triangular shape facing the front. And then I suppose it's like a rectangle there and then it's coming forward. And then we've got this circle here and coming here. So it's going to look a little bit wonky at the moment because you're mapping it up, mapping it in. And you can see his hawk with lingo. Horse's tail is infinitely useful. I'm blocking any mistakes you make because I made that too much sticky eyes. So I can just use the dot-product, this tail as if by magic, it's gone. Okay. We've got his other leg coming forward and then straight down again and then it's kicking out for the foot. Because he is a lovely piebald horses, what you call when they are black and white, we can go back in and we can start thinking nearby where his coloring zone is. That if you want, you can sketch that in being super duper rough. But we can at this stage, we can kind of go around so we can start to add a bit of definition to our drawings. Now, rather than just being tempted to draw a line around everything with the same density. Try and hover. We think about the type of line that you're using and the weight of that line. I always really advocate holding your pencil further up. You are drawing with your arm rather than your wrist. And that way you can get, you can get more freedom of movement. And you can turn your pencil as you're drawing it. Which I always really like an, actually, I really like even though I'm going rains, I really enjoy creating lines that almost create a map of the animal. And I do that using line that I use different weights with. I press and I turn my pencil. And that's just another little technique that you can use to help at definition. And it just stops you create using the same kinds of pressure and weight, an outline for everything. Because when we do that, then we end up with something. 4. Heads & tails: Okay, With a horse is faces quite useful to know little bit about what's happening under the skin. I've popped up this picture of Skipper just to break it down a little bit more simply because he's looking straight ahead, which is very helpful. Most basically, we can think of the horses heads face, sorry. Like this. You break it, break it down very basically into this cross-section here. Their prey animals, their eyes are on the side of the face. Here. And here. Very much comes up to a point. Well, not quite a point that comes up to this area here is called the pole and it's between the ears. Okay, So let's go very point to use. Let's just put those there. You've got your eyes on the sides. Then. You've got to think about the skull and the muscles encasing and protecting the eye. So you come, you coming out and then that kinda comes over. You do see he's got his eyelashes, which as I said in the first lesson, you have to think about eyes is this sticker on the side of the face. But they come to this widest point. Really broad. But everything else kind of goes in. Much. Skipper doesn't have a very big main, but we can use things like that to help. Then from the eyes, they have this, you're seeing the the front side of the cheek bone or this big bit, this big sigh cheekbone. We're not drawing this area. So it comes in and it does start to angle. You're ultimately your, your, your, your guiding yourself dying to this point matches. This should be a bit lower. And so you're seeing the signs of these cheekbones? My horses faces, they come forward. So this this area here, this area is like flats and this slopes down. That helps you. I think you can see that I bet in this picture of Skipper, but it's helpful to know that this, this, or this area flat, flat, flat, flat. So imagine you're stroking it. Flat, flat, flat, flat, flat. And then your hands would go down here because that's slopey. And then face comes out and their nostrils are lovely and fleshy and they will flare out. And also, depending on what the mood the horse is in and what type horse. Again, this is another thing that is individual, but the nostrils flare out. And again, you've got the nostrils but then you've got to encase them. And then it comes Diane just managing to fit you on Skipper. And they have this gorgeous lips. You can see here on a Harley has left is quite chunky and he's actually got lovely mustache because of the type of horse is skipper. Not so much, but you can see it's got that lovely, lovely shape. And skip has got beautiful markings. I always encourage you to use markings to your benefit. Hover. However, we play around, maybe Google some horses in different faces and look at all the different shapes and patterns and colors. Endless, endless variety, which was what makes them really fun. Characters to use. The ears. Again change, but essentially banana shape there. They have a little weird belong there. It comes in and then it flares lives. But then you need this part to attach it to the body, the head. Okay. So then there's the opposite. They're sisters, not twin. Going out. And they're always dark on the inside. The fill of hair, horse's ears, the fill of hair to protect them, but they go all the way and that's all dark. See some of his main coming out. Okay. So basic face-on. Let's have a look at Harley again. So let's have a look at this next drawing is in slightly three-quarters view. So I'm just going to start with I'm just going to do part of his neck like that. So I'm going to mark in his ears and I'm just being quiet lights because as we know, things can be changed later already. I can tell her ears. Not quite right, but he's got very chunky main. So we can, we can put that in. And again, I'm just looking at the shapes. So his kind of angle of his face, that flat surface at the front is coming down. Their eyes are going across like this. Everything is on a bit of a curve and you can see that with his nose band. Okay, so we can get started. We can look at his eye here. And then you can see it's a little sticky out, eyebrows, eyebrows, eyelashes, Holly. And then his other I come in here and again, you've got this flat and then it comes forward and you've got then the circle of the actual eyeball is there. I mean, if it helps, you can put in your circle to help you. But that's essentially how to get there. I straight across, angled down, circle for the eyeball. Then you can soften the bottom of that circle. As you like. I'm going to use his markings. That's a little bit of help. Just because I enjoy drawing them. In his main ear is terribly I'm going to be much bigger. There. I'm now he's got a collar on so you can put that in if you want. You can use that to help you with your drawing. But just make sure you are looking at I mean, usually it's more helpful to put on last, be honest, but you can also use it to help you with mapping out your horse. It's quite hard to see, but his jaw line is cheek, sorry. It's coming in here. We can see that this part this part is here on his face. Do you remember me saying face goes in like that. But you can actually see really helpfully the shadow on his seed flat area. Flats. And go. Flashy stuff down here. Straw. Come in. Here. You're seeing his Smiley mouth is really on the side. Now. I keep going from one ear to the other. And this is my way of balancing because sometimes if you were to go all the way round, all the way, right? And then you go back. You can actually find yourself having gone a bit wobbly in the middle, but it's kind of almost too late by that point to to make things kinda match up. So I just find a naturally go from back, I go back and forth in my drawings. So here we go. And I can see. This nose nostril needs to come over a bit more. If you need to go in with an eraser, you can. At my advice to you is please just don't, don't become a slave to try and get things perfect because it takes all the finite verb. Just need to take on a frame of mind. Oh, wow, That's okay. It doesn't matter. It's actually, I think really nice when you see the lines that go into making up the drawing, not just the finished, the final lines. I just think it's a nice way to show expression and the journey of the drawing. There we go. His throat. Again, as I was saying, you can see this shape here. Then you've got that thing there. And he's got his very humane and names coming forward. And there is holidays face on an angle. I can just go in and tidy up various things. I can put it on the hair color if I want. And that's going to help emphasize the shape that we're seeing. Now, I've got one more. Okay. The next image that I got for you is these are a couple of new forests ponies. And I'm just wanting to show you that it doesn't matter what shape or size your horse or pony is. They have got the say the same thing happening with their face shape. These same rules apply. Flat area at the front. Just proportionately things change. You still got these fleshy. They're almost like trumpets on colon trumpet, trumpet nostrils. Here. You've got the same things happening, eyes on the sides. And I love this one. It's good, It's great name. I love the profit when horses have got these. Wild. Unruly means eyelashes you can see sticking out properly. Here. Ponies ears, much shorter in proportion to a horse. So depending on that one in the background here, so quite long, his or her cheeks come out, they're quite a curve to them. That's a characteristic of this particular pony. And so we can get that. But we can see that these shapes coming in and let's just use those observe, see shapes. The shape, the nostrils. Again. This is face on. The nostrils are slightly different. This is a case of draw what you see, not what you think. You know. You could draw one nostril and then go, Okay, I'll draw the same on the other side, but flip it. But it's not because this is slightly on an angle. It's really rather charming. The nose is pointing away and we're seeing, you can see the lunder lip here, which is really sweet. You can just pop that in and then make that much darker. You can add on some little hairs that he's got a little star there. You can make marks. Give an indication of that without feeling the need to have to color in the whole thing. It's not necessary, especially when you're doing observational drawing. You could put a note saying blackface. White star, star. That's what this is called a star. And then this little pink here, that's called the snip. Snip. To remind you, if you want to go further, you can see from this angle, or D, c is coming, I legs coming. That's enough freely. This little cheeky number and the backgrounds. His ear. I enjoyed starting here. Here, I'm just I'm showing you how I might go buy if I was drawing with I getting so hung up on the shapes. Because I promise you, the more you practice, the more your brain will automatically make sense of the shapes. You don't need to draw the shapes out. So much. Knife fines. I take my pencil for a bit of a spin. I turn it around. I'm looking and I still explored the shapes. I still look at these shapes and planes on the face. In more of a space organic and less rigid way of fluids like little nose is wrinkling. And by doing that, I'm just, I'm really, I'm looking at, I'm looking at, I'm looking at the reference the whole time. That by taking my pencil for a walk and exploring my way across the face. It's enjoyable. It brings awareness to your subjects and you start to notice things that perhaps you might not necessarily always do. Now, there's one thing I love about drawing, especially drawing animals, is you can look at something. But then when you draw it, you see it. You really see the details and stuff that you just wouldn't have noticed when you were simply looking as a onlooker. But as the observational artists, you really notice things. She can, right? Little wrinkles here. Or some kind of see a bit better maybe in this one. With the jaw. So the cheekbones here, your eye there. This, their teeth. They've got their teeth come like this at the front. So missing here and here, like are there. But they have molars. It go right up here on the top. So the top mandible, this is all, this is all teeth and housing that you can actually see. Look, you can see his front teeth. Here. I crudely draw them in. So these are his grazing teeth and the hail trump the grass. Then that goes back to the back there, whereas it's ground up. So again, I just find that a nice thing to know so that you know, when you're drawing, that you are making space for the dentistry helps to make sense of them, I hope anyway. Okay, we're getting a really good feeling of the horse. There is one last thing I think is always, always worthwhile drawing. That is a peachy bottom. The high-end view of a horse is. It's always it's always a good one. I'm not sure. I'm going to bring on a different piece of paper here. And Holly has a particularly good bottom. But essentially if you're drawing a horse from the back, again, let's have look at the shape. He's kind of rounded. We're gonna go into the detail in a bit. We're just looking at basic shape. Basically. It's this, this kind of rounded, square, helpfully, with this gorgeous big tail. So we're now actually troubled too much by the legs, but his legs are coming down and then just put a marker here for where his feet are landing. And then the legs are coming back towards. Back towards, and we're gonna go in with some detail. Got some hawk, sorry, fetlock, they're here. That means there's concern about and we you can see the top of his base of his neck. And you can actually see if we look tiny little ear. To take this into more detail. Or horses bottom is again, very variable. Sometimes they sloping like that depends how much exercise if had and what kind of exercise. Just like people. And this is all muscle. This is, this is just muscle and Peachy goodness. So we can really have fun with that. And we can also, for him, fun with color, not really helps. The sides of these legs. It's all going to taper backwards. And you've got curves of these muscles here that go back towards the hawk, which is here, let me call it C because of the tail. But you can see the side of the leg curving and then we've got that fetlock that range join us here. From this angle. You've got the foot facing away, which becomes a little bit more challenging. But if we just look at it and break it down, you've got the back of the foot right here. Then it's just, it's still that triangle. It's just going that way and forward. If in doubt you can use your pencil to look at your ankles. And then this one here is, I mean, it's a little bit lower down and you can really see they're kind of almost a heart shape, the base, but then you've also got his fetlock joint will be there. You can only just see his hoof. So you don't even need to particularly worry about, it. Just helps all. Their feet are always going to look a little bit strange, but I'm drawing this even though we can't see it. The legs come out really narrow here. She I'm just going to draw the legs as if the tail is not there. And then we'll add detail on top. And the hawk points and towards you. Then it curves. And then essentially you've got this big muscle here. This is just power, power, power, huge bones in here, supporting all this way. And then the other side as well, this is all muscle and then it's coming down and then, but then straight down and really connect when looking. But hardly lesson, he's got this gorgeous big tail. So let's just shove that on top. Now we know what's going on underneath. We can add on the fun bits. And there we go. There's more white on there. Then there's this little ear. If you want to put a ground line and you can do that. I find something like that. It's important sufficient. We're gonna go and have a little bit of a play with different materials and different ways of developing character and understanding our horse a little bit more so that we can develop it into a finished illustration. So hop on over to the next lesson. Let's get started. 5. Play time!: Okay, Now it's time to start getting a little bit playful. I want you to have a look at what you've got a range. If you don't have lots of art materials, it's fine. You can use coffee, you can use anything at all. In this instance, I'm going to use, I've got some ink, I've got Nance, big brush and various other things. And I'll talk you through what I'm using as I do it. Essentially, we're just good to get a bit playful and think about different ways that we can represents or our host. Okay, So I'm gonna start by just using water here. I'm just going to draw and encourage the different areas. And I'm just going to, in a very basic way create an inky horse. One thing that's a little bit more random because I'm doing it this way first. So I'm, I'm having to kind of map my host site a little bit, but some of it mapping in my head. So this area here, and it might go a bit wrong, but it might go a bit right, and that's the bit. So you could use ink, you could use coffee, watercolors. Anything at all, t, right? Bina and red wine. Doesn't really matter what you use as your ink. Just something, fluids and liquids. So I actually really like that. Even without any line. Six, it looks like I can tell it's a horse. And I love that. Inc. They are as created its own little I am just going to put that a little bit. His nostrils. Okay. I might, I might just leave that. Now. You can draw with your ink. You can just go straight on with a pipette and draw. Just remember this. Papers and gray when I do this, I'm just going to do a small drawing. We could go straight on with ink. You could find a stick and dip it in the ink. Or a feather is very, very good access to a horse. Why not make a brush out of their tail trimmings? Scalp the whole thing, but I'm little tail trim. And what's fun is we can start to play around with different colors. And this is the point. This is the opportunity to be a bit playful. I'm starts experiments before we do anything else. Because these sort of things come in handy when we're starting to think by creating illustrated character. Like adding this purple. Maybe, maybe I'd like to do crazy purple horse. And actually the way the brush has gone rains, the I liked that reminds me of like a Toronto horse. And maybe that's something I want to explore with my character. So everything you do, is it valid and important and useful? So don't shy away from, from trying something and thinking, Oh wow, that's, you know, that's a bit weird, weird, weird with your drawing. I highly encourage weirdness at all times. So I got, I've got this and I'm thinking I'd quite like to get some ink. I'm quite sure how this is going to work, experimenting with you. So I've swapped up for pitcher. Let's just using some black ink here. Quite sure how it's going to work, whether it's going to work, what it's gonna do. But that's the fun. This is the bit where the magic happens because you don't know what's going to happen. And it's exciting. And let's just see. Okay. That increments the side. Edge. Brush and fun. Yeah. Yeah. This is starting to happen something. And this is kinda like playing to his hearing is just going to borrow that thing. You can do that. It's important to note that the art police will not come rains. And tell you off if you are doing things that are little bit different, a little bit, you know, getting ink everywhere. I mean, I wouldn't recommend getting income a cockpit but then met well, if it's scratchy, lines are held together by some smooth lines. Like he's been through like a Bramble dish. I hope you're getting the idea that anything goes at this stage that you are playing with your art materials. Seeing, seeing what happens as you like those scratchy marks. Trying to get a bit more. Just borrow some of that. Maybe scrub That's nice to never underestimate the value of scratching through in campaigns. Also, really lovely things happening. Then you can draw on top as well. I just got a little bit lost, but that's okay. I like this one. Combine your materials and see what's, what things go together. I challenge you to really have a play and figure out what, what, what works together, what makes you happy when you're making the drawings? Because that's what it's all about. It's much more important to enjoy the process and the finished products. Honestly, just use this time to be playful and do all the things. I thought I might try. I've got this piece of paper, but I did see me just color experiments. And what I thought, I might try. Let's have a look. Let's let's try it and see. I'm I'm just I'm just going to look and might not work, so Let's try it. I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. Here. We're all on this journey together. But it's really nice to make use of materials like bits of artwork that you've maybe not used, decided to not do anything further with. I want to say I wasn't imagining I was going to cost more light from this, but it's happening. It's happening. People. Harley, you are gonna be very jazzy. It's not looking much like a horse yet. It may never look like a horse. But basically, I am the areas that I've cut his patch. This is the black areas. I find myself collaging without glue. That's okay. We're just going to sit down there. Just do that. Then. Let's take a bit more off. Okay. Here we go. Strong top. And then this face, It's like he's gone back in time and he's, he's selling a psychedelic experience. And I'm completely there for, maybe my character is going to be some wall of a rainbow horse who knows. I've stuffed up and I'm just going to tear off his ear. Tear off his ear and bring it forward. Because I can do that. Here we go. Actually, what I could do is cut this all. Do something a little bit scraggly with late. I might shoot. I'm having so much fun. I hope you are managing to find something that's giving you as much pleasure as well. I'm having, I think that's a little patch here. And maybe just put some little marks or woodshed, so ugly. I'm gonna go back and get some good. Okay. Yeah, that is my colorful. Hardly needs to stick down. That was so much fun. Okay, so this is really interesting how this is drying. It's like waves in water and waste. This is where it's really lovely with ink and anything wet is if you just let it be, let it do its own thing. And lots of happy accidents can, can come about. Something that is very nice to draw with a scar speedily. Especially when you've got something like this. You can just use a pencil or you could just use it for the hairy, but it's a great way to recycle stuff like this. A bad You or someone you know, has got a dead mascara that they will happily donate to your creative course. Just going to ask them but look how it's kinda fun, exciting lines that we make that choice. Got plenty of them. They are brilliant. They useful an underused tools. In my opinion, we seem to associate finger-painting with childish, the childish way of working, but I often love remarks that you get there, you get a texture that is often really, really useful for using in things like my dogs noses and just paint in a little bit of texture. Right? There we go. I've got page filled with just creative play. And the really wonderful thing about this is that even though you've just like, you've been laughing about it with sticking things on and you might not think that you've been doing anything particularly useful. Let me tell you that your brain through this whole process has been continuing to absorb like a sponge information about how a horse is put together and how to represent them on the page. So it is oh, valuable and all really useful in moving forward to the next stage. I hope you've been having fun to do as much playing as you like. I encourage you to do that. And then once you've done that, let's hop on over to the next lesson and we're going to start thinking about developing our observational drawings into illustration. I'll see you there. 6. Developing Character: I brought my sketch book or for the character development stage of this is just a personal preference. You can do it on this piece of paper. Probably easiest to work with a pencil at this stage. But again, It's entirely up to you draw with whatever you feel comfortable with. When we're going from observations, illustration, when we're starting to think about turning something into a character, essentially you're wanting to start thinking about exaggerating those features. When I'm starting, I'm kind of loosely starting by drawing. This is the face on. I've gone in with the shapes, but I've kept a really simplified them. I tend to make my animals quite juicy look. None of them look like they missed a meal. So my shapes tend to be quite rounded. At this stage, all I'm doing is redrawing. Essentially what I've done, but I kind of softening it. Looking at simplifying the shapes, including the eyes, my eyes tend to just remain. Those shapes. I like to keep eyelashes. Maybe it's rain starts to become a bit like that. So I'm still very much force is not gone to. Nothing too exciting stuff. And yet now he does have this shape from this face with that. I think I'd like to play with. And I quite like the fact that it already goes off to the edge and then this is all pink. Okay, I could develop this again. So what we're going to do is we're just going to keep on, just keep from it, just keep drawing. We can redo this face eyes. We can simplify it down again. Maybe the main is becoming more exaggerated. Maybe the nose, for me is weird. Thing it small. Like the curves. Maybe the nose comes into like a very tall. Again, I'm just saturating ears to look at hormones. Also. Yes. I'm thinking that needs to come back if we completely simplified the ears, the nose, because the nostrils become super simplified. This is your opportunity to like a skull there. To discover the illustration style that you want. This is your opportunity to figure out what you like and what you don't like it when it's got more shaped like this. Let's keep going. Let's keep on simplifying. So I'm growing, I really basic, maybe bringing the eyes of it to the front of my eyes tend to be alike, the shape. But you could do something where you've got space around the eye. You could have dots, circles you have the more realistic as you can sometimes you can just really quickly get to fill out. Nope. Nope. Not for me. I'm still I'm still find my horse. Yeah. It might be that. I will find it in another drawing. I'm going to do one more like this. Like it when the eyes are further. Maybe. This feels a bit nicer. I'm not worrying about color. And then just tonight, I'm just I like this one. Then I'm going to start thinking more to the side. So we can start with our basic shape of our horse, the neck, ears, and then take it from there. So maybe like this big main session, the sides and the top is, I would make it be I do like the shape. Who keep paying. I do love a side profile because it can get more opportunity to playing around with things like names. Quite like him. He kinda matches that profile. What would I do to match this guy? There is simplified ears. That main and face. Simplified like this. Let's see Is other ear scratches, small, nose. Just try not to over there. Then maybe he's just put like a really little knife. Might not need to have any mice at all. Sometimes characterised, don't have that nice. Or would happen if rather than having a blaze, he's got a patch like like Harley main like that would be a little bit heavier. If you doing dark, just just leave some space around the eye. I'm still has its written to brief. You go back in bigger I this time. Maybe as main comes forward like that, That's cute. He's got some kind of Beardy Like Holly had. Maybe it's just a simple most simple shape. Her in the face. Like her kind of more tongue to horse. Maybes a spotty Apple looser. Maybe. Here's me just starting to think about things. Maybe he's mocking making up as I go along here, can you tell us they have the hand mark, their person? This is where this is kinda the point for me where stories develop and then start to think about the character starts to develop that. And by doing these things, I'm starting to sort of thing. Well, what has happened with this for sports? You know? What's the story? Why is it? Where's this person and why is it have these markings? What do they want to the markings mean? And stuff like that. Just starts to develop and we think about the money, but really like this one. Let's see what we look like on-site. For going for this sort of thing. I'm thinking, wow, we need to, we need to keep those nice shapes. Again. I'm just keeping it light. But essentially if we're really simplifying it, you could have your horse a bit like a jelly bean. Make sure you've got enough space. And I like, I'm going to have mine main coming forward. Cheeky little ears. Ears, face. Shape is that I want, so I'm going to let that influence what's happening with the rest of the body. Keep them nice and curvy. Lie there. I haven't decided yet what his face path name. Neck is going to be like. The nice round bottom because that's the way I do it. Tail coming forward like that, comes backwards rather. Now, I'm using on my understanding of a horse that we've, we've looked at and we've observed. And I'm just simplifying. Now. I mean, we could do the legs as simple as that. I'm going to keep it as simple. Like a circle. If he's got I do want them to have proper horse legs. You could simplify your legs all the way down to just pointing up. And it's whatever works for you and whatever works for the character that you're developing. You might find that. You might find that you want to have your leg site really super, super simple because that's going to help you to animate your, your horse throughout your, if you're creating a story. By animator, don't mean make a picture film. Mean like an actual film on meaning through illustration. Having animated Illustration. Little hairy on the backs of this locks. The further away leg. Make sure the grind line of it as a little bit further back. That'll be your debits. Big tail. And see it's partly through his legs. But we can start to now go back and refine those details. We want them to be my intervals. So but I'm going to maybe do so. So maybe they had like a looser, maybe he's gonna be a spotting. You can, as I said before, you can hover. We look at the different types of horses and get some influenced by that. I want him to have, I cannot show. That's cute. Maybe he's just really spotty course. And then we'd get some color on. Maybe he gets drawn onward, it's blue chalk. Maybe they do a circle lines this I don't know what. Marketing. I think I will go and do a little bit. A look. I could do pretty much anything, even if it's just as simple as that. Bans on his leg. Little more paint. I like it. I'm starting to feel like character is coming to gather. Useful to sort of think what maybe he'd looked like from behind. Get a peachy bottom in there. And again, THE bomb, but then the legs together and playwrights game as we remember, gets, give that tail a bit of movement. You can really get away with my parents, my products, really get away with not having to say very much at all about the fees. With a back view. Especially if you've got a horse that you've developed with a lovely big tail. That is, all I just need to do is show the grind line. And you could make the tail even bigger and cover the whole lot. But I'm gonna give them lovely, peachy, almost heart-shaped. And maybe I'm going to try and have them so his head is turning. So you'd see a little bit of the top and then come down. Remembers further away. Looking around and pick my pencil is going a bit blunt. Much coloring in. I just try and try and think of him turning his face to the side, but I'm able to use reference this and just read that. And it's further away. Yeah. What the bottom. I am enjoying his very much night and I'm really looking forward to seeing what it looks like in the finished illustration. You've all gotten on. I really hope you enjoying your, enjoying developing your character. You can spend as long as you like on this, there's no there's no right or wrong or anything like that. It takes as long as it takes. Sometimes you can be doing going on with this sort of thing for a long, long time. Or just had a cheeky little thought. Maybe this little pony, little TOM to horse in my circle around some spots. Maybe even create some part of his war paint. This is quite an exciting and that's coming from that collage I did with all the colors. Okay, this is gonna be fun. I think the next stage. The next stage, we're going to create a finished illustration. We're going to figure out how our character, we wanted to draw our character and its final state. So hop on over to the next lesson. We shall see there. 7. Let's Illustrate Line with Dip-Pen & Ink: Okay, so we're going to get going with creating some final illustrated artwork. In my hands are the tools that I'm going to be using. I'm going to demonstrate drawing using a dip pen but also quick version with a, with an ordinary water fast. This is a Tombow pen and there it's called a brush like nib. And if I'm in a rush, this is what I use because it dry. It's almost instantly dry. And you've not got the drying time of this. However, when I'm making finished artwork for a book, this is what I use. Net with a flexible nib. I like to have a good bit of splay there. The ink that I use is this. It's matte, which means that it's not shiny when you are taking photographs or having a scanned and reproduced. It's waterproof Indian ink. When it dries. I can paint over the top of it. And the color I'm going to use, I'm going to use these eco line watercolor inks. You can use just, I mean, you can use anything at all, but if you don't have ink, so you can easily use standard watercolors or water, or just ordinary pencils. Colored pencils. You need a pencil and an eraser as well. I'm going to be drawing onto some hot press. Watercolor paper. Hot pressed means super smooth, means there's no two in the watercolor paper at all. That's the way I like. And again, it's total personal preference. Some people like it when there's the, the, the tooth and the green in the watercolor paper. My preferences for it to be really smooth. So that's what I'm going to be using. I am going to be referencing my little horses and I'm going to, I feel like I've, I've really got this character here. It's come from this shape. I started with that, then went to the shape and then I decided, or what happens if we make patches. And then I started drawing markings on him and thinking that or maybe he's like a painted Toronto horse. And then what would happen if we start to bring in some colors? So I'm excited to translate him into finished illustration. Let's do it. Let's do it, everyone. My. Now, if you are planning on using lots and lots of water with your illustration, you will probably be advised to stick your paper down and that will stop it warping. Another alternative is to use a gummed block of paper. They're brilliant. I love them. For this purpose. I'm going here. You could draw straight. If you feel confident, you can draw a straight ahead straight on with your, with your ink. Most people, you probably going to want to lightly sketch out your horse in pencil first and then the pencil can be raised. Quite chunky. And this, of course, this is the point to not worry about if you get things wrong because we're still at the pencil stage. So this is why we do it. When I'm doing my final artwork for my books. The way I did is I have my rough. Then I use a light box rather than drawing pencil. And the reason for that is the printer firing up in the background. The reason for that is that the less raising and robbing you can do on a, on paper, the better. Every time you do something like that on the paper, it disrupts surface of the paper and causes it to rough up a little bit. So if you can find alternative ways where you don't have to do that, then all the better chunky hair here to come forward. Really important to get the eye placement right. So just take your time and figure out because you can you can re position at this stage. Here. Forward. I've made his legs a little bit short time. Would work for his other leg. Yeah. I'm just making him a bit in his body a bit thicker altogether. I think he needed that. Better. There we go. I can feel him though. Yeah. Okay. So I've got him here. 8. Let's Illustrate with Pen & Watercolour: Okay, let's go ahead and try to draw with the Tombow pen. Now, my way I like to do my illustrations is I'd love to have a pen line, but there is no hard and fast rules. You might create illustrations where you want just a pencil line. For a charcoal line. Maybe there's no line at all. It's entirely your coal because this is your space and your, your illustration. I'm going to go straight on with drawing, any, drawing, any pencil lines first. Try and keep those lines a little bit cheeky. This is what's good with this. And you can see that I can go up and then push down. And you get this nice feeling of variation. I, you know, I take my time, I measure and assess what's going on. As I'm drawing. It's going to have this little beard I do like that feature. Like this little, little worried. He's got his nose at first. Can't see the obvious place for the eye. It helps put the nose and then you should really be doing. Because looking at my other picture and seeing how many are where my spot placements are. If I was illustrating a book, this is what I'd have to do. I always have to match. I mean, no millimeter. Perfect. But I would have to I would have to match up the spots on my character so that it was universally matching. The other little thing I might get that peachy Bellman. I am because I want there to be a real emphasis on the roundness and the peach genus of the bottom. I've made my marks quite heavy. And that's going to give space for the marks I use on the face to be a little lighter, which will help describe it being further away. I'm just glancing up all the time at the sketches that I've done. I'm not doing anything magical by being able to draw straight on the paper with the pen. I'm just, I'm just copying awards what I have done earlier, but I'm simplifying it. By c. I'm going straight in with my line, so there's no sketchiness. That's the only difference really. Different sizes and shapes really help with surrealism, which sounds like a really funny thing when you're drawing. Like her clearly realistic character, but stuff like that. It's a balance is instead of having things that are real or not, real and things that are not. Okay. Let's get some color happening. I'm going to use a finer brush than usual because they've got these spots and things. So I I can't really didn't make my mind up by the color. But I've decided on this one. I might make them do different color varieties, is going to have these patches. I was toying with having them kind of a yellow, a slightly palomino color, or orangey chestnut. But then I've decided because I want to add color with the paint painted markings on him. I decided that having a friendly neutral color for his real spot was was a good thing. And as you can see that that Tombow pen is not bled at whole little speckling, right? That you give them. It's got a pink nose. I'm going to let that dry a little bit and move over. Now. Let's, let's try. Let's try and see what it looks like if we do a different color spots. These are water color inks. They will bleed if you touch them again with water. Once they're, even once they're dry. You can always make him very fluffy. Cute, cute. I like to have to add a little bit of tone tonal shading to my drawings. Sometimes I'll use a brush pen, and other times I'll use a Payne's gray that's watered down. This is just a warm light gray. You see is it's very pale. And that's because I'm rushing. Reactivating. This would have been more sense for me to do this before doing the spatters. So if I was creating my final art work or doing practice run for my final artwork, I would make a mental note to myself while they do the spatters loss. Every day is a school day. For the hair. Some little shadow under that nostrils. Here. Darker. Shadow of the feet. Really quite what I need to be careful. I'm undecided right this second as to where I whether I want to paint Hong the painted markings or if I want to let this dry and draw them with pencil. I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to let this dry. Come back or a pencil. Oh. 9. Colouring with Watercolour Ink: So the ink has dried and we should be safe safe to erase the pencil marks. I mean, I recommend not like heavily palm rolling away. I'm usually quite light, especially around areas where I can see the ink is little bit heavier. As I say, it is just the worse thing when you've done a drawing you like. And you capture a mark at this stage is removed. He's ready to paint. You can see or simon about that ink with its matte finish. It's not shiny, which is really nice. I'm ready to go. So the other drawings that I've done which aren't quite finished and aren't quite dry. I've decided I'm going to paint this next one. I'm going to use this unlike the blue light. I mean, I like both of them, but I think this is going to be this gonna be sweet. So I'm going to go with that. You just see this. You've messed right. Cracking on. I'm going to start with I'm going straight in with just using the pipette to drop in this tiny bit of pink color on the nose. Sometimes I like to just use the prepared to just, I suppose I'm being a little bit lazy, but it saves kind of dirtiness. Paintbrush. I don't need to and sometimes it just I just like the instantaneous delivery of a good amount of color and ink. I've done the same here by dropping on some ink onto the patch. And then I'm just using my paintbrush to spread that around I because the ink is already fully liquid, I don't need to dilute it with water. I could do if I'm wanting obviously to dilute down the color. But in this instance, I'm just using the pure ink itself. It's why I really like using these inks. You guys are great delivery of color intensity. But as with all watercolors, when it dries, you need to expect that it will dry lighter. But I do find that with the inks. The difference is a little bit less than using, say, pan watercolors. It's entirely up to you though, how you want to, or what, what coloring materials you want to use to add color to your illustration. I'm using a wet medium here. I'm using ink. You could use acrylic paint or gouache if you wanted it to be wet, you could use colored pencils or pens. There's really no rules, no regulations at all. It's a by what you've got available to you, but also what you enjoy. So have a look around, try different things and just have fun with it. Just speeding up through this process. Sometimes I use the ink prepare to just dot on some extra spots. So not all the spots are encased in this black outline. I kinda like that. I'm mixing it up probably about making sure that the ink is I'm wanting to have the dark areas in the tail, but because I don't want it to just look like it's shadow. I'm making sure that the ink is nice and intense. There. These pens that I'm using for finer details, I absolutely love their eco line brush pens and they're actually the exact same ink that I've been using that's in the bottle. You can match your colors if you want to. But the brush pen itself delivers really gorgeous amount of ink. I just really, really like these pens and also you can recharge them by using ink from the bottle. Which means you're not throwing away extra plastic from the pens, which I love. I use them a lot in the finer details of, of, um, illustration. They're just really handy. I'm just using a bit of tissue to mop up the pink on the nose was looking a little bit intense, so I've just lifted it a little bit with the tissue. What you can also do even if this is dry, I'm just clean your brush and it's just got water on it and lift some of the color off that way. That work also works brilliantly. It's time to draw on these painted decorations on our horse. And then the end, I decided to just use the puppets. And the puppets on these inks are quiet. They've called it can be quite sharp. So I can feel quite confident about being able to get fine enough lines. And it just, I mean, it's just fun, that is fun to do. And I'd find myself kind of overthinking it a little bit and just decided to go for it. And I'm really glad I did. Some of the ink on around the eye patch, as you will see, it leads just a little bit into into the blue. And that's the sort of thing that just happens. That again and I'll say it again and again and again. Do not panic when things like that happen. There is always a fixed around, um, as long as you keep your head and don't just through your artwork in the band or anything like that. You'll just see right there. I let my line come in contact with the edge of the blue line, which still with wet. And so immediately the purple ink kind of sucks into that blue space and it made it a bit too purple. So I just went in with my tissue. I soaked it up. And then I've got then I go back in with a bit more blue later, I take some really lovely warm, pale gray ink and work in the areas of shadow that I want. I always like to do this. I just feel like it, it brings that kind of level of finish to the artwork that I'm looking for. So I just work my way around. I'm kind of looking at the picture as a whole, trying to make sure it feels balanced and using the shadow to help find that balance to this no particular source of light with us. So I'm just working around and putting it onto the neck under the chin. Helping his great help to find some of the little bits of Maine and making a few marks which help deliver that extra feeling of fur and hairiness to this horse. I felt like he should have a little bit there and the tip of his bag. But there we have it is looking pretty good. And I feel like I'm almost finished. There's just one more thing that I feel like I need to do on this piece to finish them up. Can you guess what it is? That's right. Some ink splatters. I've just dipped my paintbrush into the blue ink and I'm kinda of karate chopping it rather than flicking it so that the ink drops directly below the brush rather than spraying away. And that keeps, keeps it a bit more contained. If you're particularly worried, you'd need to place some protective paper. Lastly, don't forget to sign your art work. You've done a brilliant job and you should be really proud of it. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you've done. 10. Thank you!: So there we have observations, illustration with horses. I really hope you've had a great time. I've loved it. I'm surrounded by horses, which makes me very happy. I really enjoyed that process of taking those drawings and developing them into illustration. I really hope that you have to, if you've enjoyed it and you want to try something else with me, check out my profile page and you can see what other Skillshare's I have available. Until then, please feel free to share what you've been drawing. I'd love to see them. And until next time, take care and happy drawing.