Horse on the paddock
Horse on the paddock. Digital Drawing April 2013
This is – so far – the last of my digital horse sketches. I learned quite a lot doing these sketches. I am a lot more familiar with the graphic tablet now. I got acquainted with the pencil tool in Artrage and its various settings. And of course I learned a lot about the anatomy of the horse (although I have to admit that there are loads more to learn) and I also learned to look very closely at my references.
And above all – it was fun!
Here you can find my other horse sketches:
Cat portrait
Quick cat portrait sketch, done with artrage.
After having done a few horse sketches in Artrage I wanted to focus on another animal – cats. I have lots of cat postcards from a postcard calender bought some years ago, so having references was no problem.
However one needs more than good references to produce a presentable sketch. Getting used to the stylus and the graphic tablet is one thing; getting the proportions right and the colour the other. It definitely needs a lot of eye-hand-coordination!
Cat cartoon
Cartoon cat
I sketched the cartoon cat with a ballpoint pen, scanned the drawing, imported it first into photoshop, then into Artrage, coloured it and then reimported it into photoshop to resize and crop it.
Drawing the hoof of a horse
Horse hoof. Digital drawing, done with Artrage. March 2013, Ulla Hennig
I think the hooves of horses are about the most difficult thing to draw, especially when you have to draw them in a very small size. So I did a very big one, trying to capture the essentials of it.
Sketching with the graphic tablet
Horse. Digital sketch done with Artrage. Ulla Hennig March 2013
I decided to focus more on sketching and drawing. Artrage offers pencils and felt pens as tools for drawing. Drawing with /on a graphic tablet is fun – you can easily erase wrong lines. I also decided to practise the drawing / sketching of horses; I love those beautiful animals, but they are not easy to draw.
So until at least the Easter weekend I will do a daily sketch of a horse or a part of it.
A Pair of flamingos
A pair of flamingos. Coloured pencils and markers. Ulla Hennig November 2012
I had a reference photo from the Reference Images Library at WetCanvas, and for the first time I used the grid method to get the proportions right, instead of simply tracing the image. It takes a lot more time doing it this way, but it makes one look very closely at the reference image and the image one is drawing.
Regarding the background I took big liberties with the photo. I wanted it to be bright and cheerful.
Polychromos Coloured pencils and Albrecht Dürer watercolour pencils, used dry. Markers: Delta Markers from Rotbart, copic ciaos.
Watercolour paper from Hahnemühle Fine Art, 17×24 cms.
Impala Antelope
Impala Antelope. Coloured pencils and markers. Ulla Hennig, September 2012
This was drawn after a photo reference from the Reference Images Library at WetCanvas. It was one of the photos which served as photo references for the September challenge at the Animals and Wildlife Forum. I took part in that challenge for the first time, but it certainly won’t be the last!
I found doing the background more challenging than doing the animal itself. Somewhere I read that the colour “green” is a difficult one because it is easily done in a way which is not realistic. I used all my greens (light green, two kinds of dark green) and put some blue in it. In the end I did some blending with a very light grey marker.
Fantasy Horse
Blue Horse. Coloured with markers and coloured pencils. Ulla Hennig September 2012
The horse on the reference photo was a white horse. I however had a blue horse in mind with a yellow-brownish mane and tail, coming straight out of a fantasy tale.
I must admit I traced it. It still provided some challenges though – the shading and the flowing tail and mane. But it was fun!
Horse
Horse. Coloured with markers. Ulla Hennig, August 2012
I love horses, and I love to draw them. However I traced this one. I know that a lot of people think that one should not do that, that it is cheating, and that it does not help with learning to draw. Well, I must admit that I learnt a lot tracing this horse. The horse on the photo I used is a rather chunky appaloosa stallion, with a short back. If I had done a free hand drawing of him I’d definitely drawn a longer back. When I traced the horse I first didn’t believe that I did it right. Obviously the eye sees things as it expects them to be.
Second thing I learnt was to see the shades on the photo and to reproduce them with another colour. You can’t trace the shading, can you. I did the shading with the markers only – no coloured pencils this time.
