Warm Up

Aside from the human figure, the next living thing an artist interested in illustrating fantasy, through the ages, has needed to know well is the horse. As fantasy imagery has always been tied to medieval history, and the horse was the Honda Civic for millenia across many cultures associated with fantasy, it is inevitable that a fantasy artist would have to draw them with regularity....

Except that the advent of games like Magic: the Gathering and World of Warcraft have brought forth a new paradigm, one where the horses get a break from the constant strain of butts on their backs. These modern games have eschewed traditional fantasy mores in many ways, and since they have taken up a good portion of my illustration career thus far (the former more than the latter), it ends up that my horse draftsmanship has gotten a bit rusty.

As I presently have occasion to do some hero-on-horse illustration, it seemed worthwhile to get the lead out (or the ink brush at least) and refresh myself a bit on horses. Here are a few quick sketches of horses found online, done to warm up yesterday.

That poor first horse on this sheet suffers from an extremely long rear leg, apparently

And so, in one fell post, I have supplanted the number of cute cat sketches on this blog with the more noble equine variety.