Research into how to draw a horse/ beginning sketches of one

Last semester, Emily asked me to draw her a horse for the digital timeline. 

I began by looking into the anatomy of horses and how I would start to draw their basic skeleton and muscle structure. I found lots of different pictures that showed this in lots of detail which is very helpful. I began my sketches by drawing the basic skeleton, and face shape. 

Then I researched how to draw horses and there were lots of posts about drawing using the circle method, then building the general shape off of these circles. I don’t generally use this method as I find it difficult to gage the size of the circles etc, so I just start drawing based off of pictures I find, and improve the shape as I go along, until I can eventually draw the thing without a reference image. 

I then asked Emily for some specifics on what she wanted from the horse, she said that she did not care about what colour or type of horse I drew, but she wanted it to be in mid-gallop. 

I decided to focus on the Spanish-Norman breed of horses, this is because they are one of the most common types in the UK. I then chose it to be dark brown, with beige hooves, as whenever I see horses, they tend to be this colour, and it is quite an easy colour to work with for shading and highlighting. 

After I practiced drawing the horses on their own, I decided to draw some with people riding them, as that is how the final horse will be drawn, to have the soldier on it. I did this by basing the drawings off of some reference images. This helped me to see how the person will be positioned on the horse, as well as the harnessing that will possibly be on the horse.