Hi everyone, today we're going to see how to draw an animal that's often featured in fantasy webtoons and that's absolutely adorable.

Yes, we're talking about the horse!

To help you draw it, I'm going to give you some basic tips, some fun expressions you can make it have and a step-by-step illustration where I explain how I do a simple and beautiful coloring with Clip Studio Paint.

Basics of a horse

Horses are animals that we see very often when reading webtoons or comics.

However, these can seem difficult to draw, especially at first.

 

Here are the basics of their anatomy:

First of all, we can divide the horse into three main parts:

• the forequarters (1)

• the body (2)

• the hindquarters (3)

These parts include:

the forelock (A), the nostrils (B), the face and cheeks (C), the mane (D), the back (E), the ribs (F), the tail (G), the legs or paws (H), and the hooves (I).

 

 

Proportionally, a horse is about 3 heads long, there are 2 and a half heads between the start of its neck and the end of its hindquarters and its leg height corresponds to 2 and a half heads.

If you have trouble drawing horses, I recommend using this 3D object, which helps me a lot when I have to draw a horse from a certain angle.

The expressions

Here are some expressions:

Illustration

Here is a step-by-step illustration I made to represent the complicity between men and horses.

Line drawing

I start with a sketch of my drawing that I do on a basic layer.

Then I move on to the line art of the horse and the girl which I do on a vector layer.

The vector layer allows you to enlarge the lines but also to erase imperfections when drawing.

I then move on to the line art of the background.

To make drawing the background easier, I use brushes found on Asset.

 

 

colorization

Next, I create the flat colors.

To do this, I create new layers for each area I'm coloring (clothing, skin, hair, etc.). Once these layers are created, I use the "paint bucket" tool to create the flat colors.

 

 

Tip: If your lines are not tightly closed and there are still gaps, you can adjust the "gap closure" and "tolerance" of the "paint bucket" tool. These two features prevent the "paint bucket" from coloring the entire image.

Once the flat tints are complete, I move on to shading my illustration.

 

 

Tip: to shade more easily, I use a new “product” layer (1) that I change to a clipping mask (2). This allows me not to change the color of my brush (the color is automatically darkened).

To add light, I use the “soft airbrush” tool. This allows me to create light effects more easily and add depth to the drawing.

Then, to make the illustration more lively, I add details and effects with brushes that I find on “assets”.

Finally, I add some lighting effects.

Author's words

There you have it, now you know how to draw horses!

If you enjoyed this tutorial, don't hesitate to like, comment, and share!