Draw horses and foals

Horses are a particularly popular drawing subject, probably because many (especially young girls) take care of a horse and also very fond of riding.

Because of this, you will find here various tutorials for drawing horses and foals of course with many step-by-step example pictures. For this I have in the preliminary drawing usually a frame against to give the motif a boundary and drawn in it the basic shapes. With the basic shapes you can make the horse drawing quite easily.

By the way, it is of course much easier to depict anatomy and proportions correctly if you have a template, preferably a photo, because live horses are very fast and hardly stand still long enough to be drawn.

Photo Templates

In my German blog you can find some photo templates for drawing different horses:

In addition, there are 31 photo templates for drawing, which were published as part of a horse drawing challenge. Subsequent participation is always welcome:

That regular drawing and practicing of always the same motif / theme lead to improvements in the long run, I showed in a résumé after the challenge:

Various sample tutorials

Below you will find some examples to learn how to draw horses step by step.

Dessiner un cheval debout

The horse drawing is first a very rough basic drawing with bounding box and contours. In the next step the contours become more detailed to be elaborated in the last step.

Standing horse sideways from front

Here I followed the same pattern: first the cursory basic drawing, then the detailed preliminary drawing to be able to create the actual finished horse drawing.

Draw a grazing horse

When eating, the horse must stretch its long neck all the way down to reach the ground.

Horse galloping

While a horse is running, not all legs are always on the ground. Depending on the speed, it can even happen that all four legs are in the air at times. When galloping, the horse’s mane and tail blow in the wind.

Walking horse

If the horse is walking slowly but steadily, it has two legs tucked forward and the other two tucked back.

Tricks and horse dressage

In dressage, the horse should do as disciplined and controlled as possible what the human prescribes. In this example, the horse lifts its right front leg.

Draw a foal

Foals have particularly long and thin legs which make them look quite clumsy and unsteady. The shoulder blades are also quite pronounced.

Draw horse and rider

In this example, a dressage rider is shown, but there are other riding styles (Western, for example) which differ in the rider’s clothing and saddle, as well as the way the horse walks.

Further Links

• Unicorns and Centaurs
• Learning to Draw People
• Coloring Pictures

From the German Blog

• Drawing a Comic Unicorn
• Learning to Draw with Grids
• Learning to Draw by Tracing
• Horse Photo References for Tracing

From the German Forum

• Drawing a Horse from Memory
• Drawing a Horse from the Side
• Drawing a Horse Head