Drawing A Horse With Colored Pencils | Colored Pencil Tutorial For Beginners

In this video, I'm going to show you how to draw a horse with colored pencils, teaching you some tips with blending, layering, and techniques. I am starting off with my sketch for this drawing already drawn, and I will have the list of all the supplies I used for this tutorial in the video description. The full real-time version of this tutorial, as well as the reference photo, is available over on my Patreon, where I have loads of other real-time drawing tutorials that are between 4 to 15 hours long, so you can get the full experience of learning how to draw wildlife and pets. Now, let's get into this horse drawing. So, I am starting off with a really, really sharp black colored pencil to start lining in the outer edges of the eye. And I'm taking my time while doing this, because even though I have my sketch done already, there is sort of a variation between how the sketch is done, and then what is actually the correct size with the reference photo. And so, if you don't sketch it in exactly as close as you can, your end eye is going to end up looking a little either larger or smaller. And the same goes for any other areas of the animal that you're drawing. Now, don't be too worried in thinking that it has to be absolutely perfect. It's just, you want to take your time to try and make sure that each area that you fill in, that you're getting it really close to the proportions that it's supposed to be. Early on, when you do the base layers, because then when you start filling everything in afterwards, and you add all the other layers on top, it's going to be a little bit more difficult for you to fix anything if you notice any errors. I am taking a number three round brush to blend in what I have already added to this muzzle. Now that the eye has had enough time to dry from when I last blended it, I am taking my black pencil again to fill in the second layer of black to this area. For this drawing, I am using odorless mineral spirits to blend with, as well as some paint brushes. And one of the things you want to do if you're using odorless mineral spirits to blend with, is make sure that after each time you blend an area, you allow that area 15 minutes to dry, so that you don't end up adding any layers over the top of it, and risk damaging your paper, because the last thing you want to do with colored pencils is damage your paper, because then you can't add any more layers on top. The paper just, it won't really take it. Working with smaller drawings requires you to really be very, very careful with your drawing process, because one little mess up can kind of throw off a lot of the proportions for the animal. While I'm working on the muzzle of this horse, I'm using pretty much all of my grays. I'm using the Faber-Castell 60 set, and I'm using both of the cool grays, as well as both of the warm grays, to fill in and get the colors right for this skin down here. And then I'm also using a brown too. Brown is a fairly common color to use for shading on a lot of animals, instead of just going straight for that black. When you're drawing with colored pencils, the last thing you want to do for your shadows, or shading, is just use a black pencil. What you want to do in the first place is use colors, and kind of the darker colors of those, you know, original lighter colors that you're using, and that may be browns, usually. Get a lot of layering done with your browns or other darker tones, and then you want to use your black for last, to kind of add the touch-ups for the shading. On this lip, it's darker on the section that is closest to the upper lip, and it's lighter on the bottom. And it's lighter on the bottom, because it's getting reflected light off of the side of this horse. I am taking my number eight round brush to blend this out now, and I'm using the watercolor eight brush that you see me using, because this is a watercolor brush, and the difference between it and the other brushes is that this brush tends to give a softer blend. So it gives me a nice, like, really smooth and soft blend, whereas the other brushes are more rigid, and they tend to kind of push around the top layer, and kind of transfer pigment in other areas, and then leave other areas kind of more on the bare side. And I don't want to do that with this horse, because the overall, this horse has a very smooth transition of different colors. So I want to use this brush, because it will help me achieve that with this drawing. Now I'm taking my number three brush to blend all of this out. I'm taking my van dyke brown to fill in a little bit more of the shadows on the kind of upper portion of the lip behind the nostril. And then I'm also going to carry it through to some of the other areas of these shadows on the horse, because I can always darken these up later, but starting off with the van dyke brown is a good point for these shadows. I am taking a little bit of middle cadmium red to add to some of the portion of the muzzle, and a little bit further up on the face of this horse. I am taking burnt sienna to work in some of the reddish shadows going on for this horse's face. When you're working in shadows on horses, it can be really easy to go a little too heavy. Horses tend to have kind of a, how do I put it, they have some highlights, but they tend to be more muted. They're not like super shiny or anything. And then a lot of the shadows, there's a lot of little teeny subtle shadows in a whole bunch of different ways and shapes, and so it can be really confusing to figure out where you need to put everything, and try to identify the shapes on the face to fill everything in. So this is one of the reasons why it is really, really important that you try to not rush yourself, as I did with this tutorial, but also that you try to focus on maybe a dime-sized area. Pick a dime-sized area on the horse from the reference photo, and then match up that dime-sized area on your drawing and and isolate the colors. So with the color that you're working on currently, that's what you should be focusing on and figuring out how much of that to put in that dime-sized area only. And as you work through the whole drawing, keep working in those dime-sized sections so that you don't end up getting lost. And when you rush yourself, you end up not paying as much attention to specific areas. You're more focused on looking around everywhere, and that can cause you to make mistakes, as I did, where you're constantly having to go back and readjust the values and other little shadow, shapey details that you put into the face of the animal. So I switched out for my number eight brush because, as I've said before, this brush gives me a more smooth blend, and I don't want it to be kind of pushing around the pigment. I want it to have that smooth blend that this brush is really great for getting. So now that that section I blended out earlier on the front of this horse's face has completely dried, I'm better able to identify what I added too much on, and then, you know, any other areas that I need to kind of darken up a little bit as well. So I'm taking my Tombow Mono Eraser to erase off some of the areas that need to be more highlighted with this drawing than opposed to being kind of a mid-tone to shadow area. So now I'm taking Deaf Blue to add this color into some of the area around the eye of this horse that's kind of also in the shadow. I am taking Burnt Sienna to start using for some more of the shadows on the front of this horse's face. I am taking Van Dyke Brown to fill in some more shadows. Taking my Walnut Brown to start filling in some of the really darker shadows. Now I am taking Sanguine to add this color into the face as well to kind of get a little bit more of that. It's less saturated. It's not as bright of a red as, say, Cadmium Red, you know, or that dark red that I was adding before. This is kind of more of a lighter red color with a little bit of orange in there. So this is going to take care of some of that reddish orange color that I'm seeing in the reference photo and, you know, because the Burnt Ochre doesn't have a whole lot of red in it. It's way more orange. So I don't want to add any more of that into this until maybe some of the last layers in particular sections that need it. But for overall, this horse's face has quite a bit of red in it. I'm taking Burnt Ochre to fill in a little bit of kind of the lighter orange colors on the top of the head before I come back through with any of the darker tones or some of the reds that are up there as well. When you're limited on colors to use, I have the Faber-Castell 60 set, which comes with quite a few color options, although it doesn't cover every single option that there is. And you have to really think about what colors you're going to need to use in order to replicate the colors you're seeing in each specific area of your reference photo. You can't just identify one color for say the top of this horse's temple where it's very very orange and bright up there versus kind of on the very front of this horse's face between the eyes down to the muzzle where it's kind of more dull and not as bright. So trying to come up with which colors to use when my options I felt like were only this Venetian red, the burnt ochre, and kind of a little tiny bit of Van Dyke brown. And I am going to take my number eight brush with my odorless mineral spirits to blend this out now. I'm taking my Van Dyke brown to work in kind of the first shade layer for some of these shadows and I'm taking it very very lightly. And then also with doing a lot of the shading on the side of this horse, the the fur details for this horse are so thin and fine that you're really not going to notice a whole lot of them. And to get adequate detail for this horse you really don't want to use a whole lot of precision strokes and mainly because this horse is small. If you were to make a larger drawing it would be a little different. You may want to add some strokes in there to get some of those fur details but in this sake for this small drawing you don't want to do that. You want to use a dull pencil for most of this drawing actually unless you're trying to get into some of those little intricate details like the bridle and the eyes and the nostrils and lips and whatnot. But for the rest of this horse you don't want a sharp pencil and you want to use the dull pencil and move it in circular motions very very lightly to create a very even application of this shading without creating any harsh strokes with it. So this mane it's if you look at the colors it's got in it there's kind of a reddish brown color to it. So by doing the van dyke brown that's going to give me some of that brown color and then by taking a venetian red to it it's going to give me a little bit of that red color in there as well. And then some portions of the dark area you could get away with using a little bit of magenta or even deaf blue just just a hair of deaf blue but focus the deaf blue more on the really dark areas rather than the areas up front because even the shaded areas up front really most of the hair there kind of has a red cast to it so you don't want to use cool colors for this when you're really only seeing warm colors. I'm also taking my warm gray 5 to build in some of this base layer as well because there is kind of a grayed out effect to this fur I mean fur hair and once I get all of these colors in with this section of the mane this is the base color I'm going to be going through later and working in all the actual hair details with a darker brown like walnut brown or black later and once I get all of these base colors in I'm going to blend this out and let it dry so that way when I come back through later and add all of my darker colors over this I will be able to scrape off the darker top layers which will reveal the under layer that I've done which is closely matched to the highlights that I'm seeing for the mane. So this really really helps you create realistic looking hair by doing this. Taking my Tombow mono eraser to take off some of the colored pencil that I've already got down to help create some of those little kind of sheeny highlights which horses are notorious for having. Taking my walnut brown to start adding in some more of the darker shadows on the neck. Now that I've kind of worked in as much of the walnut brown as I'm going to get in you can kind of tell as you're applying the layers how much of this is actually getting applied in there and how much more you probably would be able to add and it won't go any darker than the color that you're applying. Then you know it's time to start using black and you definitely don't want to press too hard with adding that walnut brown on there either because you don't want to end up burnishing the paper. It kind of smooths the finish out and adds the maximum amount of layers and then you won't be able to add anything over the top of it and we want to be able to go over anything any other layers that we're working on with this drawing and be able to come back through and add the black on top to get all of those values to the correct darkness that they really need to be. We have moved into working on some of the the bridal and I'm working on the metals first just because I want to get those in first so that when I come through and finish everything out with the browns because the browns are a lot lighter of a tone so if I end up making some of the metal work a little too thick in some areas I can just add the darker colors over it and it's going to fix it because it's going to cover up the lighter metals underneath. So I've been using my cool gray 2 and then of course my cool gray 4 to work in a little bit of kind of the the lighter portions of the metal and I did that on the bit as well and then I also used a little bit of cream on the portion of the bit. This is a snaffle bit. So I kind of worked in most of the shadows or most of the bridal at this point. Some of those areas have a little bit of a lighter cast to them so I'm taking my warm gray 2 to fill those in. Now that the kind of the back and barrel of the horse hasn't had enough time to dry now I can go over that and kind of correct the mistakes I had done. So first off I grab my Faber-Castell pencil eraser and erase some of that off there and while that's drying I'm going to use my walnut brown on the chest of the horse to kind of add in some of the darker points to it. Now I'm using my burnt sienna to also work in some shadows to the chest that are a little bit more of a red color and then I decided to kind of touch up on the front of this horse's face so I am using white to touch it up and make it a little bit lighter because the drawing as it was before was already matching what you were seeing to begin with and so the white is going to make it more accurate to what I'm seeing in person. I'm not adding a fairly heavy layer this is actually a pretty light layer just to kind of add that little touch that it needed. So I'm working in the first layer to the reins on this bridal and with this I'm using venetian red as a base because this color in itself is already really really close to the actual color that this needs to be so I'll be using the venetian red and then going over it with walnut brown to add in the shadows and kind of darken some of the other values going on. So now I've decided to use just a little bit of medium flesh because this is a lighter kind of a pink color which is present for this rein. If you add too much of this pink color in there you can come back over it later with brown and darken it out and it's it's already really close to the color that needs to be there so you're really not going to hurt it too much if you get too much of this on there. I'm using my burnt sienna to work in some more of these darker red parts to the shadows on the lower neck and chest. So from this portion on through the rest of the drawing I'm going to be going through to kind of tweak a lot of the shadows and get the values and everything accurate. So I've gone pretty much as far as I can with using all of my browns that would be the walnut brown the van dyke brown and any more that I add isn't really darkening it it's just kind of caking on and I want to get them darker so it's at this point that I'm going to start using black very very lightly to increase some of the shadows for this portion of the horse to help it look more realistic. This black transfers on so well that if I am not careful about how much pressure I apply I can end up adding too much. You can learn more about drawing with colored pencils from the top right playlist of all of my colored pencil tips or you can learn even more from my real-time tutorials over on my Patreon. I offer 1 to 15 hour drawing tutorials of wildlife and pets in colored pencil graphite and pastel. When you sign up you have instant access to a growing library of tutorials and new tutorials are added each month. Thank you so much for watching see you in the next video!