How to Draw Horses

Apr 20th, 2004 | By | Category: Andrew: Notes from My Back Pocket, Columns

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Eileen is a horse fanatic, and almost every week, she insists that I draw one for her. The problem is, horses are one of the most difficult animals to draw. When I finally decided to go ahead and draw a horse like Eileen asked, I found myself doing it body part by body part. Here’s how I pulled it off:

1- First came the head. Now, horse heads are an interesting shape, and it’s hard to replicate it on paper. So I just took a head of a similar shape, that of a cartoon dinosaur, and used that instead.

2- I can’t draw manes for the life of me. The closest thing to a mane that I can draw is the wig David Bowie wore as Jareth in Labyrinth.

3- Horse ears were another problem. Donkeys are similar to horses, and I can draw their ears just fine. Unfortunately, the Jareth wig took up so much space I had to draw them on there attached with tape.

4-I can’t draw horse limbs, either. I figured a pneumatic robot arm would look cooler anyway.

5-Eileen wanted the horse to be drinking booze for some reason. Obviously, hooves wouldn’t work. After all, how would he hold his delicious martini? Luckily, I can draw orangutan hands pretty well, so I jammed one onto the end of the arm.

6-The body was so difficult I decided to cover it up entirely with a trench coat.

7-By this point I was bored with the whole notion of drawing Eileen a horse and thought “Screw this, I’m getting’ me a soda!” So I replaced the hind legs with some ethereal whispy-shit. It’s a magical horse genie or something.

And I was done! A more perfect recreation of equine grace and beauty Eileen couldn’t ask for!

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Andrew Kaye (known in some circles as AK) is the creator of Ben & Winslow and other questionable comics, many of which can be found in his deviantART gallery. He’s also the editor-in-chief of this magazine. Duh?

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