#dharmaart

Thanks!!

I can draw horses from memory, but they don't tend to look that good 😅 it's really difficult and a great way to feed my insecurities. I sometimes draw horses without a reference when I want to come up with a composition idea and on rare occasions when I'm drawing something stylized (like the image directly bellow). The middle photo is of a painting that I started by drawing from memory, then checked some references for the harness and the horse's pose but didn't really need to change anything, so I guess it sort of counts as being drawn from memory? The last one is from when I was trying to sketch an idea for a kelpie painting, one of their attributes is making their back longer so they can lure more children on to it so they can drown them,* and I thought that was a fun idea to paint so I sketched it without a reference.

* In its equine form the kelpie is able to extend the length of its back to carry many riders together into the depths; a common theme in the tales is of several children clambering onto the creature's back while one remains on the shore. (...) he survives but the other children are carried off and drowned, with only some of their entrails being found later (from the wikipedia article on kelpies)

I'm always happy to answer asks about how I make my art. I don't really know anything about animating so most of what I can help you with is just stuff to think about when it comes to equine locomotion.

I would suggest that you start out using Muybridge photos as a reference (they are available on Wikimedia commons) for animating horses. Make a plan like the one shown bellow once you've chosen a gait to animate to establish things like, when is the hind end at its highest and lowest point? How does it get there? When you've got a good idea of how things are moving then start animating.

In the video I just give some suggestions for what to look out for and think about with horses specifically. There's a lot more I could talk about but I tried to just cover some basics. Ultimately I think studying horse anatomy is always going to be a huge help.

I tend to prefer older art, but I often see amazing horse art made by contemporary artists I just don't reblog it because I feel like it keeps my blog a bit more cohesive if I only post my art and some art history stuff.

Thank you! I really wish there was a good way for me to ship my art to the US, hopefully some day things will improve.

p.s. love your art. the moose animation totally counts in my opinion

My username is just my name Dharma and the word art combined, because I couldn't come up with anything better :) As for the name Dharma I only ended up being called that because my mum likes Buddhist philosophy.