Shadowing Practice: 3 tips to make drawing horses easy(er) 🐴 - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Horses are the bane of many an artist.
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They are big, lanky and not commonly kept in cities and population centres, which means that most people don't have frequent contact or familiarity with them.
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As a certified horse girl of many many years, I'm here to share with you some tips on how I draw horses to hopefully allow you to do the same.
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The key to drawing anything well is being able to simplify it down to its basic shapes.
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I picture a horse's body as two connected spheres, effectively forming a bean shape.
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The head is a wedge with the tip knocked off and spheres for the muzzle and cheek planes.
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Put these together, add some lines to show neck, tail and legs with circles for the joints and and triangles for the hooves and we have a horse.
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But how the hell do I know where to put everything?
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This is a horse.
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Just like people, horses come in a vast array of different shapes and sizes.
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However, for our purposes, we're going to generalise a little bit.
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Don't worry if it's a lot of information to take in at first.
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I put a cheat sheet and some resources in the video description and if you're stuck on something, you can always use references.
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I've locked the skeleton in to illustrate the useful landmarks more clearly.
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The horse's head is approximately the same length as its neck, the depth of its girth, the distance between its elbow and its fetlock joint on the foreleg,
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the distance between its shoulder and its wither, between the ground and its hock joint, and between the hock joint and the siphle joint.
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The hop joint is even with the chestnuts on its forelegs, which are located just above the knee joint.
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The elbow and stifle joints are roughly in line.
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The point of the buttock is slightly higher than the shoulder joint.
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The length of the body is about two and a half to three times the length of the head, and the distance between the ground and the horse's withers, which is the high point of its shoulder,
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is roughly equal to the distance between the point of its shoulder to its buttocks.
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Hence the saying that a good horse is square.
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Onto the head itself, the eyes are located roughly a third down the central line of the face
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which is essentially an elongated diamond shape.
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The mouth ends roughly one-sixth the way along the face and the cheekbones roughly one-third of the way down.
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The eyes, ears and nostrils can be placed on the head at 45 degree angles from the central line.
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Keeping these proportions in mind will help you
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when constructing the drawing of your horse and if something feels off you can and always check your drawing against them.
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My third and final tip for drawing horses well is practice.
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Get familiar with their skeletal structure, their muscular structure.
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Use references, trace images.
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If you're able to go and see a horse in real life then do that.
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Or watch videos to learn how they move.
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Draw them a lot.
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You'll begin to see how the basic proportional rules apply and that sometimes they don't.
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With repetition and practice you'll develop the muscle memory of the shapes
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and proportions that make up a horse and eventually you might even find it easy.
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Well that's all for today everyone, hope you enjoyed the video and stay tuned for the next one.
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Thank you.

About This Lesson

You're practicing English with "3 tips to make drawing horses easy(er) 🐴" using the Shadowing technique — a method originally developed for professional interpreter training.

Focus on sounding like the speaker — not just repeating words. With 15–30 minutes of daily practice, you'll build real-world speaking confidence.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.