Horses are of all animals the most difficult to draw. To their exquisite proportions, the wonderful delicacy of their slender limbs, the spirited grace of their beautiful bodies, we feel, despairingly, that only a Rosa Bonheur, a Lucy Kemp-Welch, or an A. J. Munnings can do justice.
Let us study first the heavier breeds, the big dray-horses with their kindly frank faces, their great fetlocks, their splendid massive bodies. These will give us fascinating subjects which need not overwhelm us.
If you have no opportunities of sketching the cart-horse in the farm-yard, you may possibly make a rapid sketch from a window, or track your subject down in a side-lane, as I have done in this drawing.
The positions of my two cart-horses are foreshortened. The long bodies are hidden by the hind-legs, and the finished sketch is nothing more nor less than a square, from the upper part of which extends the neck and crest of the head.
As I have said before, when drawing things foreshortened, sketch the nearest shapes first, and the receding shapes later. If we mark the angle of the flank, the angle of the large bodies of the back of the knee, the shaggy fetlocks, we shall perceive that the fore-legs—having the length of body between—are shorter than the hind-legs. The body, too, dwindles.
Drawing the horse approaching toward us or as seen sideways, we must run the eye from one point to another.
Look at the angles of the limbs, the 'slew' of the haunches; glance from knee-cap to knee-cap; from the massive deep chests to the beautifully rounded hindquarters. Note how the curves and muscles of the arched neck compare with the muscles and curves of the thigh, and the silky thick flow of the mane with the long wavy ripples of the tail and the shaggy clustering of hair round the fetlocks.
Try to make separate studies of the separate parts of the body, head, and legs. When you are sketching the head in profile remark the great length of it (the skull of a horse is an amazing size, almost as long as the body of a human being), then mark the greatest depth from the eyebrow to the outline
