how to draw a horse for kids

Below you'll find an easy step-by-step How to Draw a Horse Tutorial and Horse Coloring Page. Scroll down to learn more and download yours for free.

Inside you'll find an easy step-by-step How to Draw a Horse tutorial and Horse Coloring Page. — Drawing of a Horse

Horses in Art

The appearance of horses in art dates all the way back to the prehistoric Lascaux cave paintings found in France, estimated to be about 17,000 years old. Of the 6,000 images found there, 364 are of horses.

Later on, Renaissance period artists were also very inspired by them. A few who loved to make art with them include Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Raphael, Andrea Mantegna and Titian. In 1482 the Duke of Milan commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to create the largest equestrian statue in the world, howeverLeonardo's horse was never completed, (until it was replicated in the late 20th century).

Fast forward to the time of the cowboy and native Americans in the west, and you can find more who dedicated drawings, paintings and sculptures to these beautiful animals. Two of the more famous examples are Frederic Remington and C.M. Russell.

Today, kids who would like to make their horse drawings look a little more realistic can get some help with a step by step tutorial. Horse bodies are made of lots and lots of subtle curves from all those amazing muscles. Breaking them down into some simple shapes that get connected, makes it a lot easier for students to see and understand.

How to Get Started

The best way to get students off to a good start to any drawing project is with the help of drawing guides.

You may have noticed that there is a grid of three dashed lines, both in horizontal and vertical directions, on every step of this tutorial. If students make their own centered lines on theirown paper, before drawing, they will have an easy reference to follow.

For instance, as seen in Step 1 below, the horse body shape starts with an oval that sits in thecenter of the paper, both horizontally and vertically. It is tilted just a bit to and touches guide lines on both ends.

Drawing skills are all about getting the size and placement of lines on paper, so having some visual reference point to get started, will always help anyone learn how to be a little more accurate.

So does that mean students need to draw a big fat pencil lines one their white paper before they start? Goodness no, please don't! That will most likely be hard to erase and distract from any finished art. No, simply fold the paper in half twice , both ways, make a crease, and unfold. The beauty is that by the time the drawing is done and colored in, the creases will disappear.

And now, on to our horse drawing project.

Use Button below to Download a PDF Tutorial

Inside you'll find an easy step-by-step How to Draw a Horse tutorial.

New! Coloring Page Gallery

Here's a new option for busy teachers and parents. You can now easily download this drawing as a coloring page with the red button below. Just click to open it as a PDF, and save it to your desktop. You'll have a free coloring page that you can print as often as you want, for whatever kind of project you want. Use it for younger students that want in on the coloring fun, or as a full size visual aid for those that are following the drawing tutorial. For many more fun things to color, please see my COLORING PAGE GALLERY It's never been easier to see and download so many all in one place!

Horse Coloring Page

Materials for How to Draw a Horse

Pencil. The Ticonderoga brand are the most reliable, make nice dark lines when you need them, and are the easiest to erase. Buying the pre-sharpened ones will save busy teachers a lot of time.

Eraser. Large ones you can hold in your hand do a much better job than just the pencil tip erasers, especially when erasing leftover pencil lines after tracing.

Black Sharpie Marker. These fine point permanent marker pens make nice black outlines, have a good tip for coloring, and never bleed when they get wet. Use them with good ventilation and add extra paper underneath to protect your tables.

Prang Crayons. These are a bit softer than other crayons so they sometimes look like oil pastels. They also have a some nice brown shades that Crayola does not have unless you buy their larger boxes.

Crayola Crayons. The reliable brand that always works well. The 24 pack has some of my favorite golden orange and yellow colors that seem a bit richer and warmer than the ones Prang has.