On drawing Horses (I.P)

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You want to have a soft but firm pencil, one that's been sharpened and then used enough to take off the edges, the angles, to get the sweeping top line.
The top of the neck from the poll should curve gently down to the withers, into the dip of the back and around the slope of the haunches.

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The council where I lived used to supply their public toilets with that very thin loo paper, see through, shiny on one side, it made great tracing paper, I used to steal rolls and rolls of it. Paper was in short supply in my home. Sometimes I'd get those cheap scrap books with the rough dull coloured pages, only very rarely would I have some plain white paper, that was something special, so special, It took me ages to actually use it. I'd look at it and not want to spoil it.
I almost always drew horses, always facing left, I drew dogs too, from any angle, but my horses were always side on, facing left.
I borrowed library books and studied them avidly, copying the pictures over and over.

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The throat should be soft, malleable, the shoulders are bone and fine muscle, long and sloping, this gives the horse a graceful swinging stride.

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Every book I owned had drawings on the fly leaves, and inside the covers, even in the margins. I drew on the edges of old newspapers, tore open cardboard boxes and drew on the insides.

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The upper parts of the leg, to the knee and hock, are strong and muscular, the knees are flat at the front and almost square at the sides, Sharpen your pencil for the lower legs, these are almost all bone, sinew and tendon, the pasterns should slope like the shoulders, these are the
shock absorbers.

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I drew all kinds, Racehorses, Arabs, Native ponies of Exmoor, Dartmoor and the New forest, Sometimes we went to livestock auctions and I watched, my throat tight, as that years youngstock were sold off, sometimes for as little as forty or fifty pounds,for meat. I looked
at them as they huddled in the corners of their pen, muddied, tired, terrified,
I knew I could tame one.

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The head is mostly bone, the fine cut of the jaw and cheek, the muzzle is soft, it has been described as velvet, but that is wrong, it has no nap, it is somewhere between rose petals and felt, the eyes are prominent, looking face on,the head is coffin shaped with the eyes at the widest point, use a very sharp pencil for the head, then shade in the hollows, with a worn down pencil, use your finger to soften where it should be soft, the eyes need to be large, dark, expressive, the ears are mobile, not firm, the base should be pliable, wrinkled.

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Every year I entered the W.H Smith win a pony competition, I had no idea where we would keep it if I ever won, we certainly could not have afforded it.
I gave up when I was maybe 9 or 10.

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Use a worn pencil to shade in the hollows in the flanks, the throat, the delicate ripples in the shoulders and haunches, use a sharp pencil for the hard edges of bone, the canons,the fetlocks, the skull.
Using the edge of the lead, sweep in the mane, the tail and forelock, sharpen again for the detail and the wiry hairs on the muzzle and chin, the long eyelashes.

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