The Artist's Encyclopedia

Ciameth’s Wing Tutorial

Direct Link so @ciameth keeps 100% of traffic on their DA account. 

The description also contains a wealth of other wing and bird resources!

Thanks for reading! If this post helped, please consider reblogging it or sharing it with your friends! ❤️

Working on another poster! Here's part 1: facial structure and eyes. Nose and ears up next.

Wanted to share some more art I just haven't uploaded from last year! Really enjoyed doing these feline studies, dozens of hours of unseen research went into each on top of the many hours it took to draw 😵

Also shout to my cat Ezra who I snuck into the Felis study to represent the domestic cat hehe :3c

You can find it at: https://www.animal-photo-references.com!

Here's how this repository works: all photos were taken by me, a human, at zoos, aquariums, sanctuaries, and other facilities with animals in human care. There is no AI involved in the photo editing or creation and there never will be. Right now there's 56 species on the site; my catalog has over 300 and I will be uploading the rest of them as fast as I can.

Artists creating derivative or transformative works (without AI) have blanket permission to use these references. Yes, even for work you're going to sell.

All other usage/reproduction requires permission, but assume I'm friendly and please do ask! That's educators, researchers, the media, people who need images for a school presentation, etc. This is just to retain copyright/control in case they're scraped/reused unethically - it doesn't meant I don't want folk to have access! So please do reach out via the contact form on the repository website, I don't bite and I'm most likely going to say yes.

Please don't repost the repository photos to your own blogs: I've created @animalphotorefs as a dedicated blog to share photos from the site, and of course I'll reblog a lot of it here! That again just helps with retaining copyright and sourcing of the images. If you really want to repost some for a specific purpose, please just ask me first!

Also, folks, this project has no funding. It's just me and my camera.

There will never be a paywall on the site - I believe resources like this absolutely must be free for everyone to access. So please, please, please support the repository if you use it. Want sneak peeks at photos, cute videos I take, or to help choose what I photograph and what gets posted first? You can do that through Patreon (and there's a free trial on the most interactive tier!) If you'd like to just drop a tip, I've also set up a Ko-Fi.

I can't wait to hear what everyone thinks of the repository.

To whet your thirst for cute photos, here's an Indian rhinoceros contemplating a goose.

A new viewpoint on antlers reveals the evolutionary history of deer (Cervidae, Mammalia)

fullview recommended!

something i've wanted to do for a while now. i've scoured the internet for something like this and can't find anything that compares all the different types of antlers together. except one recent study on their evolution, which is also very interesting on its own! i simplified it to provide a visual reference, while still trying to be scientifically accurate. some things differ between this and trophy scoring terminology like where the beam is and whatnot, so if something looks weird that's why.

small additional note, this study and others provide a lot of evidence that eld's deer should be in their own genus as it doesn't appear similar enough to barasingha and schomburgk's deer. however this doesn't seem to be adapted anywhere yet, so they're still in Rucervus for this guide.

🔴 KO-FI

A superb fuck-ton of bear references.

If you’re doing animation or something pertaining to bears walking, for the love of mud, watch some clips before you start. The forepaws move a bit differently from other animals. And regardless of how fat and squishy they may appear, they. Run. Fast. They are coordinated and strong. Like I said, watch some clips to get a better idea.

Two years ago, I made horse colour charts show casing a variety of colours. They were absolutely hideous and shortly after completing them, I decided that I wanted to remake them in a prettier format

I finally started the first remake on the 18th of June. After finishing that, I left this project alone until the 15th of July at 22h19. And now, finally, on the 17th, at 20h40, I completed it. 11 charts (see part two for the 11th)

288 horses, 42 hours and 16 minutes of drawing

Of course, there is space to add in additional colours if need be but I am Not doing that now.

Part 0 explains horses genetics in text and is fully comprehensible without having to look at images. It does have additional information that these image posts do not have.

Edited 30/08/23. Added 7 horses (horse count 295.)

Edited 12/11/23. Cream has been updated to be more accurate. ID changed to alt text. Some horses may have been added or removed. I do not feel like counting.

Edited 19/11/23. Changes to the text of dun as order had made nd1 vs nd2 misleading. Slight edit to W34 - made the mane and tail a more creamy colour to indicate the lightness is probably caused by flaxen and not white.

Edited 20/11/23, added link to horse reference masterlist

(Click on images for better quality)

Some questions answered

Can I reblog? Yes, please do!

Can I repost on Tumblr? I'd prefer if you reblogged it but as long as you credit it to actuallycuteanimals then sure.

Can I repost on another platform? Sure, just credit please, no need to link back to this post.

Can I use these in real life (print them out, show them to other people)? Sure, just credit please.

(Also if you've reposted it/shown it to comeone irl and they had nice things (or corrections) to say then please do share 💖)

Yeahhh horses are hard. They have lots of little nuances on top of complex anatomy and weird ass shapes (literally and figuratively). Drawing them requires lots and lots of practice. And this is like...entire art book levels of subject matter but here are a few tricks that I've picked up over time -

Key body shapes - shoulder, barrel, hip

I won't go too far into this one because Ken Hultgren does a much better job in his book The Art of Animal Drawing. But TL;DR - a horse's body has three main masses - the shoulder, the barrel, and the hip. Each one is tricky to draw on it's own since they're all weird shapes, but it's helpful to me to break a horse body down into simpler terms.

Key muscle masses

When I draw horses, I like to emphasis curves vs straights. Horses have that built in naturally as their body is often either "pure muscle" or "pure bone". There's some really nice details at the intersections of body parts, like at the front elbow and behind the ears along the neck (aka the "poll") where there's highly definable muscle groups that can help with visual clarity.

Fun fact, young horses grow hip-first. The horse in the photo above is 8 years old. That same horse at 4 years is below. Cracks me up how much taller his hip was at the time.

Ok so the muscles on the front legs combined with the shoulder mass is a fave combo of mine. The shoulder mass itself is something that I've found that is particularly horse-ish. For me, it's a pretty big visual signifier - almost more important than the neck. You can show a lot of tension/action in the body with the shoulder depending how you simplify it. Horses use their shoulders A LOT (too much if you ask any dressage rider or reiner), so emphasizing the shoulder can make a horse more expressive.

Legs. Oh heavens, the legs.

Yeah ok so again, Hultgren goes into fantastic detail on legs and hooves (I still follow how he simplifies hooves to this day my gosh that guy is a genius), but I often break them down like this for quick sketching. Are horse's legs realistically this emphasized? No, but I like the visual language; believable but expressive. This can apply to any size/shape from arabians to drafts.

And finally...

A few head details -

Overall horses have SO many variables. The fun part about that is that they're highly customizable and able to be endlessly stylized. The tough part is that they're hard to draw strictly because of all of the little things to keep track of to make sure the horse reads as "horse".

And so because third time's the charm, Ken Hultgren's Art of Animal Drawing really is one of the best I've seen for breaking down, simplifying, and applying horse anatomy to active drawings.

But most of all, the more you draw horses the easier they'll be.

–

Basic tapir guide for artists

Blue’s Feathers and Wings Compendium: Atypical Wing Shapes

Wings Part 1 [Standard ]| Wings Part 2 [Atypical] | Feather Markings | Tail Feathers [Part 1] | Tail Feathers [Part2]

A compendium of different feather marking types that can be used for inspiration in writing and art; especially if you want to be explicitly clear on the markings and don’t want to just have “striped” or “spotted”.

All right, here’s my contribution to the art tutorial infographic world, part 1 of 2.  I’ve noticed that even in professional illustration, so often the humans and environments and armor and whatnot is really, really great— correct anatomy, lighting, proportions, like ‘wow this is fantastic WAIT what is up with that HORSE?’

I suspect two things;

First is that I spend 15 hours a day, 365 days a year looking, touching, handling, and just generally being around horses.  

Second is that most people do not.  

Artists have lost touch with their connection to horses as contemporary society has lost touch with them.  Generally, we don’t have that constant presence of horses in our lives that previous generations did, as horses aren’t part of the everyday landscape any more.  They don’t work the fields, they don’t cart the goods, they don’t deliver the mail or transport you to the next town down the road.

However, we still see horses all the time— in movies, books, illustration, ads and logos, we are presented with the image of horses all the time.  So we assume ‘yes, I have seen horses often and I know what they look like.’  Because of our exposure, we as artists don’t always feel like we need to heavily reference the animals as if we were drawing something we don’t see everyday (say, like elephants or giraffes or sea cucumbers).  Our brain just kind of plugs in ‘horse shaped’ and we go with that.

And I suspect that ends up being where a lot of these common mistakes occur.  Dogs are familiar, but we can easily find a dog to draw from live, to see the way the shapes of its face are put together in 3-dimensions.  Cats, humans, birds… if we venture just a little ways outside our studios (or in some cases, inside), we can find live models to study easily.  

You can’t really do that with horses.  They’re a commodity, sequestered away behind fences on private farms and shuttered away in barns.   So few people really get the chance to be up close and have that hands-on experience to really learn how a horse is put together.

So here’s some things, based on my own experience both drawing and working with horses, that might help you if you find yourself needing to draw one for yourself.

The approach I took might be more complicated than absolutely necessary, but I tried to present the subject of ‘how to draw horses’ a little differently than I’ve seen it done before.  I hope someone finds it understandable, and more importantly, helpful!

I grew up loving horses, and disappointed in lots of horses that I saw in animation. 

Horses are beautiful animals, with their own anatomy.  Yes, they are hard  to draw.  Horses were the first thing I really learned how to draw well, and then I kind of moved on from there.  But they have their own anatomy, its beautiful, and interesting.  Theres a lot going on.  I always get kind of sad when I see beautiful stuff with just plain bad horse anatomy.  Especially the ears, horses have such pretty ears.  Not triangles.  They also have a lot of body language and they can be very expressive. 

So yeah. Horses are great!  Study that sheyit.

I see a lot of lovely anthro art that is ostensibly of hyenas, but is stylized a lot more after canines.

This is understandable. Most people assume, from the roughly similar appearance and behavior, that hyenas are some sort of caniform. This assumption leads to some unfortunate problems.

There’s an awful lot of hyena art that ends up just being spotted dogs.

Hyenas are actually a feliform carnivore in their own distinct family. And they have some very unique anatomy that, unfortunately, tends to be lost when building from the canine assumption. This is the most noticeable when it comes to spotted hyenas, who have the most distinct look of the four extant species. And which this primer will focus on.

This primer is in part inspired this excellent reference guide by Kenket, and from my own adoration of these weird, beautiful animals. And my desire to see their funky anatomy be better appreciated.

You don’t want your hyena to look like a canine. You want her to look like a hyena. And I reckon there’s three major shapes that make a hyena Hyena shaped.

All right, here’s my contribution to the art tutorial infographic world, part 1 of 2.  I’ve noticed that even in professional illustration, so often the humans and environments and armor and whatnot is really, really great— correct anatomy, lighting, proportions, like ‘wow this is fantastic WAIT what is up with that HORSE?’

I suspect two things;

First is that I spend 15 hours a day, 365 days a year looking, touching, handling, and just generally being around horses.  

Second is that most people do not.  

Artists have lost touch with their connection to horses as contemporary society has lost touch with them.  Generally, we don’t have that constant presence of horses in our lives that previous generations did, as horses aren’t part of the everyday landscape any more.  They don’t work the fields, they don’t cart the goods, they don’t deliver the mail or transport you to the next town down the road.

However, we still see horses all the time— in movies, books, illustration, ads and logos, we are presented with the image of horses all the time.  So we assume ‘yes, I have seen horses often and I know what they look like.’  Because of our exposure, we as artists don’t always feel like we need to heavily reference the animals as if we were drawing something we don’t see everyday (say, like elephants or giraffes or sea cucumbers).  Our brain just kind of plugs in ‘horse shaped’ and we go with that.

And I suspect that ends up being where a lot of these common mistakes occur.  Dogs are familiar, but we can easily find a dog to draw from live, to see the way the shapes of its face are put together in 3-dimensions.  Cats, humans, birds… if we venture just a little ways outside our studios (or in some cases, inside), we can find live models to study easily.  

You can’t really do that with horses.  They’re a commodity, sequestered away behind fences on private farms and shuttered away in barns.   So few people really get the chance to be up close and have that hands-on experience to really learn how a horse is put together.

So here’s some things, based on my own experience both drawing and working with horses, that might help you if you find yourself needing to draw one for yourself.

The approach I took might be more complicated than absolutely necessary, but I tried to present the subject of ‘how to draw horses’ a little differently than I’ve seen it done before.  I hope someone finds it understandable, and more importantly, helpful!

I grew up loving horses, and disappointed in lots of horses that I saw in animation. 

Horses are beautiful animals, with their own anatomy.  Yes, they are hard  to draw.  Horses were the first thing I really learned how to draw well, and then I kind of moved on from there.  But they have their own anatomy, its beautiful, and interesting.  Theres a lot going on.  I always get kind of sad when I see beautiful stuff with just plain bad horse anatomy.  Especially the ears, horses have such pretty ears.  Not triangles.  They also have a lot of body language and they can be very expressive. 

So yeah. Horses are great!  Study that sheyit.

Blue’s Feathers and Wings Compendium: Standard Wing Shapes

Wings Part 1 [Standard ]| Wings Part 2 [Atypical] | Feather Markings | Tail Feathers [Part 1] | Tail Feathers [Part2]

I have expanded the traditional 4 types; Highspeed, Elliptical, Low Aspect and High Aspect ratio, because they were very narrow and vague categories for the most part, adding High Energy, Thermal Soaring, Night Glider, and Passerine wings. I feel that these extra types make it easier to understand and visualize the differences and similarities between wing shapes.

I’ve renamed Low Aspect to Powered Soaring, and High Aspect to Dynamic Soaring for the purposes of the fact that names made it hard to understand purpose and were easily confusable. 

A lot of these wing types are also affected by tailfeather shape and size, and that will change their agility and energy expenditure as the tail also generates lift.