How To Draw Horse

Horses are one of the most popular animals to draw. While drawing a horse may seem hard at first, if you break the image down into simple shapes, you'll be able to draw a respectable horse in no time. Then, as your confidence grows, you can start to draw horses in motion, from different angles. Before you know it, you'll be creating realistic and impressive horses.

If you are starting out, the easiest angle to draw a horse from is its side. You know this angle -- it is where the horse is in profile, with its side facing you. This is the way almost everybody draws their first horse. You can take the image of the whole animal and break it down into three simple shapes and have yourself a reasonably good horse drawing in no time, though. Here's how:

1) Think of pears, as in apples and pears. A horse's body can be simplified down into three pears. The largest pear makes up their hindquarters and their belly, with the hindquarters being the backside of the pear and a belly being the slimmer part of the pear. The next pear makes up their and neck and chest area. Their chest area is the fat part of the second pear and their neck is the slim part. The last pear creates the horse's head. The fat part, or bottom of the pear is the side of their head with the eye and ears, and the slim part of the pear is where their nose would be.

2) Once you have drawn the three pears, the next thing to do is add legs. The back legs of a horse are very different from the front legs, and so even if you are creating a horse's legs with just two strokes of your pencil, you'll need to make the back legs different.

For the back legs, think of a modified "K" shape, without the spine part of the "K", or just think of a sideways "V", but with the "V" spread apart a lot. The point of the "V" is pointing away from the horse. Keep in mind that though this is a bent line making the hind legs, it is a very wide bend, and the line will be very nearly straight down by the time it meets the ground, where your horse's foot should be.

The front legs of the horse can go straight down, tapering into the hooves. To suggest the horse's knee, make a circle just a bit larger than the part of the leg where the joint is.

3) The finishing touches for your horse include their hooves, mane, and ears, eyes and nostrils. The hooves can be made with modified squares or rectangles. Notice how the front part of the hoof is much longer than the back part, so you'll need to make your "hoof box" longer in the front, shorter in the back, and thus the top line will tilt back, almost like the box is becoming a triangle.

The mane and tail can be a series of curved lines. You can also make the mane short and sticking up, kind of like a mohawk. The ears can be simple upside-down "V"s, or you can make them leaf-shaped. The eyes are usually created by just defining the horse's eyelid... kind of a sloped line that is short of like a box, but without the bottom and the right side of the box. The nostrils can be leaf-shaped again, or some people draw them as little curlicues.