Anatomy of a Horse

Anatomy of a Horse:

The horse is a herbivore; being a prey animal. You notice how different the skeleton is of the hunter animals.....

All four footed animals seem to follow a certain pattern when it comes to their shoulders and hind quarters. Prey animals eat much of the time, and as grass and vegetables don't hold much nutrients for the animal, so that's why you see herbivores eating much of their time.

Having a look at all the different forms of anatomy, you can see marked differences. By the size of the skulls to the different size of the bones. Do go back and forth and compare these animals anatomy. You may be quite interested in seeing the difference.

Horses are well muscled for flight- meaning when danger threatens, they run away.  As you can see the eyes are on the side of the horses head. So getting the distance of the eyes right with the horses fore head is something that you need to take a little more thought with than other aspects of the animal.

You may find if you don't think about it, you will draw the front of the horses head too thin. I have done this myself, why? we perceive this in our minds. Though what we see and reality; when actually drawing the horse on paper, is another thing entirely

In anatomy of a horse, legs are complicated when it comes to putting in much of the detail. And the knee, well.... it's such a sophisticated mechanism of works, that this is why we really need to study the workings of the knees on an animal.

With anatomy of a horse, I have found time and time again when sculpting them, that the knee is a challenge, and not in the way that you think.  There is detail as you would never have thought, running your hand over it will give you more of an idea (that is if you have a chance to get close to a real horse), the ligaments and bones of the knee, are complicated indeed.

I have found that just looking at an animal before beginning my next piece of work helps. You sort of soak in more detail, almost like an athlete. You are preparing yourself for the job you need to do ahead.

Sound strange.... well art never is or was straight forward. Do we really want it to be anyway!

Here we are with a picture of the back of the anatomy of a horse, notice how the rump of the horse seems to go towards a point. This is not always going to be straight forward, because if the horse has more fat and muscle on it, that point will disappear. You will find there are certain breeds of horses that follow this pattern. The heavier breeds of horses, and also the quarter horse.

Actually.... talking about the quarter horse, I must warn you that this breed has muscular quarters and front shoulders, giving the impression that the front legs/shoulders of the horse are a bit shorter than the back. Do keep this in mind.

Notice also in the anatomy of a horse, how the back legs bulge, how the lower muscles in its legs curve, so follow the muscles that overlap and give the form in the high and low definition in the back legs.

Here we have the side view of the horse anatomy, muscles intertwine and overlap to create the horse as we know it. The reason why muscles overlap is to give more leverage in strength. You could almost call it "Murphy's Law". It just works.

So we need to capture the light and shadow of these features. The better you get, the more confident you will feel to even going a bit further in detail with your work. Some artists also show the veins cleverly under the skins surface. Not easy, but if you persevere; you will be able to achieve this too. Only if you want to get this much detail in your work of course.....

Anatomy of the horse, as with any other subject. Needs to be studied, if you didn't study it, how do you think you would fair? ok I guess.

But you will not understand the fundamentals of the true animal, or to be a better artist. You will always be referring back to photos and pictures when doing your own work. And when drawing a specific feature, you will refer back to those photos again. So you wont get away with it.

Because living nature is made in a way that they are successful, with all the necessities they need to survive and flourish in life. And for that, their specialties in build and form will always have you needing to understand their unique qualities.

Lets return from Anatomy of a Horse to Horse Art