horse skeleton

Here is something I drew while studying equine anatomy. It's an excellent example of what happens when you confidently draw an entire hind limb without considering the space required for the rest of the horse ...

Truth be told, I wasn't too worried, as my aim was to become more familiar with the names of various bones. It's very odd to consider that the horse's knee is equivalent to our wrist - meaning that they are actually delicately poised on one finger. No wonder they are so prone to tendon strain when we work them hard.

So here's my very creatively compressed horse

anatomical horse

Well, sometimes my gothic fiction interest creeps into my horse drawings (not so often the other way around). This was intended as a response to Stubbs, but it does come across quite ... unsettling. It was something I was considering putting in a reasonably conservative equine art competition / exhibition some time ago. Think they would have gone for it?

By the way - it's Liquid Spectrum ink (permanent) on watercolour paper.

under the surface - anatomy

The beautiful horse paintings of George Stubbs - the best encouragement imaginable for equine artists to study anatomy!

anatomy drawing

It's really challenging to get a good sense of the anatomical structure lying under the horse's skin, especially when it comes to the complicated muscles and tendons of the fore and hind limbs. I had some great sources - Stubbs' Anatomy of the Horse and Adams' Lameness in Horses, but I found I had to get an understanding of how the structures work before I could make sense of some of the details. I'm looking forward to more study in this area.