Admin With this horse and hussar study I got to combine going back to my equine drawing roots. Plus to continue with improving my human face drawing skills.
I found a really great reference photo on pexels.com which supplies free to us images.
Talking about reference photos, I’d love to start getting my own collection of living history/reenactors images. Down here in Devon, we seem to mostly get WWII events. Which are interesting, all get to be a bit the same each year.
Anyway, back to the drawing. I cracked open a new sketch book for this one, as I needed a larger drawing area. The image size is 23x18cm (9x7inch). The sketch book is one that I picked up from Hobbycraft last year.
Pencil of choice was my ‘go to’ StaedtlerMars Technico 780C Mars clutch pencil. I say this every time, but they, but I highly recommend them if you are looking for a good quality pencil.
I have to say, when I started this drawing, I was a little apprehensive. There was a lot of detail, especially the lace/ribbon on the Hussar’s jacket. The Hussar’s waistband also looked quite tricky to do.
Plus apart from all the little details, I had to render a human face and also a horses head.
The human face was my biggest challenge, but I think it came out ok. I still struggle with the nose, but feel I’m now getting a process/method for rendering human face features.
The horses head, well that felt like coming home once I got going on it. Funny how muscle memory kicks in when drawing.
One thing on the ref photo, which was odd. The horse had a very modern nylon head harness under the leather tack. To be fair, I’d imagine the tack is not period correct, but it looks right. So when I was drawing the horse head, I had to exclude the harness.
I really did enjoy drawing this image. Maybe because I had no pressure to create it as a piece to sell. I was drawing for fun and trying new techniques and replicating different textures.
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