Put Through Your Paces: My Top Five Artistic Exercises

Introduction

I often speak of “artistic exercises” when I write how-tos, but what do I mean? Well, every realistic equine artist should have an arsenal of basic tactics they can use to check themselves or better prepare themselves for the job at hand. I refer to these tactics as “exercises” because that’s what they really are: Putting us through our paces to get us back on track. And we should be applying them liberally in preparation to and during our process to stay on point. In this way, they also happen to make tremendous problem-solving strategies to find our way out of the weeds whether it be in sculpture or painting.

The thing is, it’s alarmingly quick and easy to get off kilter as we sculpt or paint. It often happens right under our nose, too, as our perception skews things off alignment or out of scale. For instance, this can be typical with very complicated areas or areas demanding of intense attention making them vulnerable to regimentation such as dappling, ticking, and pinto patterns. But if we can apply these exercises throughout our process, chances are we’ll ping our goals much more accurately.

So to help beef up your own exercises, here are my top five that I find particularly helpful beforehand to prepare and during the process to stay accurate. So letsa go! (said like Mario!)…

Top Five Exercises

#1 Tracing: Digitally on your computer in a photo editing program, make a tracing of a reference photo, like say, of a head, from the side. You want that photo to be as perfectly on-the-side as possible. Use the paintbrush tool with red “paint” to make your tracing so it really pops out, and do it on another layer so you can pop images underneath it. Then use that reference photo and sketch it out. The sketch doesn’t have to be fancy, simply focusing on the structure and placements and proportions will do. Now take a photo of that with your phone (making sure it’s a quality full-on flat view and not at an angle), get that into your computer (I usually text the photo to my computer) and pop it underneath your red tracing. Now scale and align things the best you can. Wherever they align is where you nailed it, but wherever they're off is where you went askew. Make note. 

Do this enough times and you begin to see patterns in your perception skews that you can then work to correct. Like maybe you have a propensity to place your eyes too low and make them too large, or maybe the nostrils are often too sloping off the end of the schnoz and too angled, or maybe your mouth and teardrop bones are misaligned a lot. Well, doing this exercise many times over will make all those unwanted tendencies pop out. And that’s just it, you want to ferret out your habitual skews to bomp them back into alignment.

In fact, you can use a variation of this tactic to keep your sculpture in check, too. Simply snap photos of your piece with your phone, and pop it under your tracing. This is especially useful for heads which can skew out of alignment or proportion very quickly.

#2 Window: For painting something complicated like a dapple grey, ticking, sooties, pinto patterns (especially lacy ones), or just any coat color typified by complex aspects, try this tactic. Print your reference out on photo paper in the scale of your piece. And use photo paper, not printer paper as you want to preserve as much detail, crispness, and color saturation as possible (even better, use a tablet). Now take a piece of printer paper, and cut out in the middle of it a little square. For a 1:9 scale, that square can be about 1”, for smaller scales scale it down and for larger, you can scale it up a bit. Now lay that little window onto your printout and go over areas of the body, making mental note of where you are on the body. 

What this method does is to remove distraction of The Big Picture for the actual effects and textures and tonal shifts by making you focus on a very specific area on the reference. Do this enough times and your Eye will train on the very complicated color shifts and details quickly so when you lift that printer paper off, your Eye will be more sensitive to hyper-focus on an area better. Indeed, this really makes roan and dapple grey “grain” pop out, the complicated color play on sooties more obvious, and the complex interlay of ticking or lacy effects much more readable. In short, it’s a tremendous translation tool for scale, lay, and accuracy. And now that your Eye is thusly trained, often times you won’t need to lean into this tactic so much because it’ll already apply that “window” to its processing and you’ll just see all this much more naturally.

#3 Comparison: For sculpture, make a very specific pile of references, of say “Arabian mares,” or “Marwari stallions,” “Warmblood gelding,” or “Clydesdale foals,” all of them full side-view as possible, no angles or odd perspectives. Now take your set of sliding calipers (something like this) and start making proportional comparisons all based on the head. That’s to say, take the head measurement from right behind the ears to tip of the (unpooked) muzzle and use that measurement to make comparisons of that head length to areas of the body and legs. What this does is train a mental library of the intrinsic individual variation within each breed or type and between breeds or types. And being able to See individual or breed variations is incredibly important to not only ping breed type, but to do so in a respectful, individualistic way. The thing is, all our Arabians, Quarter Horses, Thoroughbreds, Lipizzaners, etc. should all look breedy, but they should also be individuals with their own unique characteristics and proportions. That’s to say, they should portray unique, individual souls and not cookie-cutters in our portfolio. Not only does this explore equidom better, and really inject more interest and challenge into your work, but it’s also more thoughtful to the dignity of this fine creature. When we stop objectifying them based on a “perfect” ideal and really start seeing them as individuals, it’s amazing how a paradigm shift happens for the better!

Now for painting, make a very specific pile of references of, for example, “frame overo,” or “wild ticked sabino,” or “sooty dappled palomino,” or “medium dapple grey,” or “classic silver dapple.” And sometimes you have to separate them into breed piles, too, as genetic pools can skew these colors into their own characteristics. For instance, Shetlands and minis often have a very different expression of silver dapple than say, a hairy cob or Rocky Mountain Horse. So stay sensitive to breed/gene pool variations. So now take one pile and lay those photos out and start making your comparisons between them. What makes them similar? What makes them different? What specific characteristics about each one make them distinctly in that “family” of color or pattern? How does each one diverge? Where is your fudge factor? Where is it not? Creating a mental library of the key characteristics of each color family or pattern family while at the same time understanding where you can bend these characteristics is key to pinging it all more accurately in our paintwork. Do this enough times and you can often then paint a color or pattern without being so dependent on a reference, giving you a lot more autonomy for doing the other side. Sure we can flip over our reference for the other side, but that doesn’t always work so well all the time, does it? But if we already knew where to go, we have a lot more agency for getting it right “blind.”

#4 Invert: For coat effects like dappling and complicated pinto or appaloosa patterns, consider this approach — invert the colors of your reference. To do this, take your reference and pop it into a photo editing program then find the “invert colors” option and there ya go! The lights become dark and the darks become light and — bam — does that stereotypical pattern pop out a lot more! And being in such a fresh new visual, it can really knock your habitual perception for a loop, which is exactly what you want when painting these effects to help avoid formula or regimentation. In other words, by coming at the problem from a different angle, you gain a better shot at hitting your mark. This is an especially powerful tool for pinging dappling patterns such as on greys, roans, sooties, champagnes, and even seasonal dappling. Now yes, it’s a bit of a shock and takes some getting used to, but it can be a very useful tool for getting those dappling patterns on point better.

#5 Scaling: Take your reference photo(s) and use a photo editing program to scale them to the exact size, or as close as you can get, to the actual piece you’re going to paint or sculpt. Then print it out on photo paper to that scaled size and work from that, in addition to your normally sized references (to see detail better). Or consider this kind of scaling on a tablet for new view. See, what this does is automatically scale things down or up for you, giving you something far more objective and tangible to work from than having to scale up or down in your mind which can inadvertently skew things out of proportion. Make your references do the work for you!

This is a super powerful tool for painting, such as for dappling, roaning, sabinos, complex pintos or appaloosas, and for sculpting, such as for heads, legs, muscling, and detailing. It just gives you a more accurate key to work by to keep things in scale. Because that’s the big deal with realistic equine sculpture — scale. Get that right in as many aspects as possible, and you’re almost guaranteed to create a realistic piece. So anything we can do to helps us target it better will be a super handy ability in our skillset!

Bonus tip: Sketch! Do lots and lots and lots of sketches! Seriously — lots. And they don’t have to fully fleshed out sketches either, but just those that work on proportion, placement, planes, and articulations mostly. In essence, think of approaching these exercise sketches as a kind of practice for blocking-in the initial structures on an armature more than fully realized pieces. What you’re doing is practicing over and over these key qualities so you develop more of an Eye for it on your sculptures.

Conclusion

The more we put ourselves through our paces, the better for our art, and this means one thing: Doing something over and over and over again. That’s what most of this boils down to — volume. Because make no mistake, volume counts! Excellence isn’t achieved by a potter focusing on one pot fanatically, but on making a bajillion bad pots before learning how to make them well. That’s how learning art works. So think of these exercises as a kind of shorthand to do that without having to make sculptures or paintjobs by the metric ton. They can help you get to where you want to go developmentally faster and often more effectively than most anything else.

So spend some time for this kind of R&D in your busy schedule, and make it a regular habit before and during each sculpture or paintjob, and sooner than you think, you might find your work improving in good measure, faster and more targeted than before. This is because these techniques tend to target another things besides scale: Our blindspots. And it’s in our blindspots where our errors reside. So the more we can dredge them up to the surface for scrutiny, the faster our work is going to progress and in more technically accurate ways. And discovering our blindspots isn’t only often surprising, it’s exciting! It’s kinda like a treasure hunt of sorts because you not only see where you’re off, but how to fix it all in one go! Because there’s nothing like a problem seen than a problem solved, right? So put on your proverbial artistic running shoes and hit the track to discover just how much potential is still brewing inside of you!

“Success is a worn down pencil.”

— Robert Rauschenberg

Put Through Your Paces: My Top Five Artistic Exercises

Measuring Proportion: Ahead Of The Game

Introduction

Back in 2015, I wrote Mapping Out Success: Equine Topography detailing my proportional measurement system I used for sculpture. No small matter either. Having a solid proportional system is really important for realistic sculpture, in fact, it's the very basis of realism itself. Indeed, everything we sculpt can literally be described as a function of proportional relationships. Get the proportional relationships right then and we create a solid sculpture almost by default, but get them wrong and there's no saving that sinking ship. So the more reliable the system, the better, but it should also be quick, easy, and highly adaptable to accommodate all our varied needs and subjects. Honestly, having an arduous or clumsy system won't compel us to apply it as often as we should when we work.

That being the case, over the years I've since refined that 2015 system by adding in some new measurements and altering how I relate them to each other, all of which works a lot better for me now. I don't use this just for sculpture though, but also for studying references with a lot of compare and contrast analysis. By doing this, you can develop a more robust mental library able to draw from more possibilities as you design your composition and make artistic choices as you work.

Landmarks

Knowing the body's bony landmarks can be really helpful for determining our proportional measurements because they entail fixed lengths of bone rather than variable lengths of muscle and tissue. As such, our reference points should really be based on the bony skeleton as much as possible for this reason. So knowing where those bones and the joints are located in the living animal can really make or break any proportional system. And, of course, the more precision we can apply, the better. So familiarizing ourselves with the palpation points and bony anatomy through field study, photo analysis, and diagram investigations can really help our process. (Incidentally, knowing the bony skeleton and the joints also helps us build our armatures with greater ease and accuracy.)

The Body

Using those palpation landmarks then, here's my updated proportional method:

Notice that everything is still based off the head measurement, as measured from the back of the ears at the poll to the tip of the upper lip. It’s from this measurement that all the others derive, which can be broken down into three-quarters, one–half, one–third, and one–fourth increments. From those then we can finagle our way to greater precision because they give us a place to start. I just find this tactic makes things far quicker, easier, and much more adaptable, things that are most welcome in the immediacy of actual arting. So, practically speaking, what I'll do is delineate my head measurement on my reference photo and then pre-measure and indicate the respective three-quarters, one-half, one-third, and one-fourth measurements so I can quickly refer to them with my calipers and the sculpture. 

As for calipers, I like to use my Prospek proportional calipers for on the fly measurements. It's cheap and easy to use, making it a steady partner in the studio. Then I may use a pair of locking calipers, fixed with the head length, for quick reference of the back and larger sections. (The key here is "quickly" because I often work in epoxy clays that have a cure time unlike oil clays or Sculpey which have open work times.) By doing this preliminary work, I now have all my measurements at the ready for quick reference.

Now let's talk about body width, or more specifically, chest width, a common question that comes up when it comes to proportional measurements. This is probably the most tricky measurement to gauge only because it's so variable and situational. That's to say, there's really no fixed standard measurement for the chest largely due to its anatomy. See, there's no bony connection between the torso and the scapulae. It's just muscle, fascia, ligaments, and tendons that lash the scapulae onto the body which means that chest width fluctuates with movement and conditioning. For instance, it can squish together with foreleg adduction or expand with foreleg abduction. Likewise, an overweight or heavily muscled animal will often have a wider chest than a svelte one and especially an emaciated one. Horses that wear weighted hoof stacks or "packages" on their fore hooves also tend to have wider chests simply due to the muscle conditioning from lifting that weight repeatedly. So here field study and lots of good references are going to be crucial to make our situational determinations for our sculpture because for the most part, we're just going to have to eyeball it best we can. But when we do measure, think about using the points of shoulder as the measuring points as their knobby bumps make for useful landmarks (the black dot in the diagram).

This now brings us to shoulder length, another tricky measurement also due to shoulder anatomy. Because there's no fixed, bony connection between the scapulae and the torso, this means the scapulae can slide fore and aft and up and down a bit, too, and everything in between. In practice then, this has the effect of "lengthening" the look of the shoulder as it slides forwards or downwards, or "shortening" the look of the shoulder as it slides backwards or upwards in relation to the fixed point of the top of the withers. And the more athletic, agile, and supple the horse, the more pronounced this movement. Again, lots of field study and analysis of good reference photos is going to be important here so pay attention to what the scapulae are doing in relation to the torso when you gather your measurements.

All in all though, it should be mentioned that these aren't idealized measurements, they're simply the measurements I take to start my process. In fact, this is a tracing of a typical Thoroughbred stallion so, absolutely, these proportions will change according to individual variation, breed, gender, and age. Always remember that proportional measurements aren't gospel but simply guides we tweak as needed to faithfully portray our specific subject. They're starting points only. Now yes, there are certain lengths that are preferred when it comes to conformation. For instance, having a long shoulder and hip, long forearms and gaskins with short cannons and what not, but that's beyond the scope of this article. Just keep in mind that when it comes to proportional measuring, you'll have to factor in conformation at some point, too.

The Head

As for the head, it's probably one of the most difficult things to sculpt when it comes to horses. You gotta admit, its many planes, angles, symmetries, and skeletal and fleshy structures offer a continual challenge to even the most seasoned sculptor. That being so, we can get confused and go off track even with the most painstaking diligence or even worse, become quickly overwhelmed and frustrated. And as humans who are visually oriented and sensitive to facial cues, we naturally zero in on the head immediately. If something is off then, that error can become rather distracting and compromise everything else we’ve gotten right. Luckily though there are some basic associations we can use as guides, as baselines that can guide our sculpting of any equine head with relative ease. And by providing a straightforwards architecture, a framework of sorts that helps to direct our sculpting, we gain more clarity and direction in what we’re doing. Even better, these baselines are universal regardless of the breed, species, gender, age, expression, or individual, and so we can apply them across the board to express any characteristic or eccentricity.

Just remember this: These guidelines should be used as a starting point from which to build those unique features your piece needs. In other words, think of these measurements as guides that you’ll need to tweak as needed. We need a place to start, right?  

This is the Ears–Eye–Nostril Alignment (EENA), a pretty simple alignment easily gauged with a straight edge like a pencil, ruler, or the long side of Prospek calipers. Going from the bottom of the ear bulb, past the bottom of the eye and to the bottom of the nostril, this is the alignment that not only helps us place the ears, eyes, and nostrils but also helps to determine a straight head, convex head, or concave head. For instance, many Thoroughbreds, Warmbloods, Saddlebreds, Mustangs…most horses…have a more or less straight alignment, or a straight head. There’s a bit of variation, of course, but for the most part, many types line up to a straight EENA pretty well. In contrast, sometimes this axis can be bent upwards, or convex, with the nostril dipping below the line as can may see with breeds with a convex profile such as many Iberians, Campolinas, Kladrubers, some drafters and such. In contrast, sometimes this axis can be bent downward, or concave, with the eye encroaching on this line. This kind of head can sometimes be seen with some Arabians, in particular, or other “dishy” heads. But this is why carving in a dish or simply adding a roman nose often doesn’t create such a convincing head type because we aren’t addressing the actual axis of the head. What’s more, notice that the teardrop bone somewhat parallels the EENA in part, too, a handy observation for refining its orientation on our sculpture. Regardless, use the EENA to study lots of different heads to get an idea of all the variety and options involved — there’s a lot!

Generally speaking, the horse’s head can be broken into thirds, from the ear “V” to the front canthi of the eye from that point to mid-cheek and from that point to the end of the upper lip, the Eye-Ear Length (EEL). This measurement tends to be more or less consistent among heads though deviations between individuals, breeds, and species can occur. When they do, however, it tends to be in the length of the face rather than the distance from the eye from the ear, but not all the time so pay attention to this.

As for the depth of jowl, a good baseline start is this: It’s often one–half the length of the head from the forehead to the bottom of the jowl (when the mouth is closed).

Similarly, the depth of the muzzle varies quite a bit between breeds, individuals, and species, but a general baseline to start from is that it’s about one–fourth the length of the head. From that we can decrease or increase its depth as needed. The width of the muzzle can vary a lot as well, being quite broad or quite narrow, and everything in between. This is also where references photos of a straight on front view are so useful. Nonetheless, we can think of muzzle width as almost one–fourth the length of the head, adding or subtracting width as needed for our sculpture.

Ears vary tremendously between individuals, breeds, and species, even genders as mares tend to have longer, even larger ears. Foals also have relatively larger ears since they haven’t quite “grown into” them yet. Similarly, hemonids, asses, and equine hybrids tend to have larger ears while zebras do as well, who may also have ears of a modified shape. In contrast, some stallions have really small ears on occasion. On that note, some breed standards require a certain size of ear such as Shetlands, Hackney Ponies, and Dartmoors who are supposed to have tiny ears. But a general place to start these explorations is this—many ears tend to be about one–fourth the length of the head from the bottom "V" to the tip. From that, we can lengthen or shorten, or even enlarge them as needed.

Now determining the width of the head, the distance between the brows, can be quite tricky as it varies a lot between individuals, breeds, and species. For example, some Iberians, drafters, and Saddlebreds can be rather narrow whereas others like the Arabian, Morgan, and some ponies can be quite wide. Study lots of reference photos from different angles when determining what you need, ideally with a front on shot of the head to really get a more accurate reading. But if we've done a lot of study, we'll probably have a mental library to make our own judgment to compensate. Even so, a good start is a measurement about one–third the length of the head, between the front of the brows, then we can make it more narrow or wider as the sculpture warrants.

As for the width of the jowls, that varies a lot, too, especially between breeds. For example, Quarter Horses can have very wide, hefty jowls, even extending beyond the width of the teardrop bones. Nevertheless, we can start here: The width of the jowl is almost one–half of the head length then make adjustments as you need to.

The width of the cheeks, the area of the head between the jowls and muzzle, is often comparatively narrow, sometimes markedly so. So to get us started, think of this area as being about one–third the length of the head, adding or subtracting width as needed for our sculpture.

Nostrils can be a tricky thing to sculpt owning to their fleshiness and pliability. They can certainly squinch to become narrow and pinched one moment to then become wide and cavernous the next. So here’s where study and reference photos are particularly helpful, especially since all this needs to be synched to the level of exertion or the mood depicted by our sculpture (since horses also communicate through their breathing such as snorting or nickering). But we can think of a resting nostril as a baseline and even though that varies a lot, we can make a general starter observation: The length of a typical nostril, from the upper “V” to the bottom of the posterior rim (at rest), is about half the depth of the muzzle.

For a baseline, the angle of the mouth can run more or less parallel to the EENA. There’s going to be variations, of course, but this gives us a good place to start our investigations. As a general tendency, too, the corners of the mouth protrude out a bit while the front “corners” of the lower lips tend to protrude a bit past the upper lip but tend to be more depressed inwards at the corner of the mouth. This isn’t always the case, but we can use this tendency to identify variations.

The length of jaw bars from the intersection with the jowls to the start of the chin varies a lot, but a starter baseline is this length can sometimes be close to the EEL. Study this a lot between individuals, breeds, and species to find all the fun options for your sculpture.

The width between the ears, or the crown, also varies a lot between individuals, breeds, and species so study this, too. For instance, generally speaking, Arabians and Morgans can be quite wide in the crown whereas Iberians and some drafters can be relatively narrower. As a basic measurement though from which to make your necessary adjustments is that the crown can be roughly one-third the head measurement from the “V” fold of ear to ear.

One feature of the head that’s wildly variable is the size of the eye — not the orb itself, but the eye as seen with the surrounding fleshy features. So do a lot of study here to find your options. For instance, Arabians and many ponies appear to have bigger eyes than say drafters or Warmbloods due in part to the structure of the surrounding fleshy features and the relative size of the heads. A common mistake when sculpting the eye though, as a function of artistic stylization, is to make the eyes way too big, so knowing the bubble of possibility here can be really helpful to avoid this hiccup.

The Method

So in practice, what I'll do is begin with the shoulder length and build the entire sculpture out from that as a starting point. In this, I'll work on the torso first then the legs, then the neck, and ironically the last part is the head. As for the head, I'll start with the profile, length of the head, and jowls first so I can establish the teardrop bone from which I can build out to the EEL and the EENA in order to place by eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth. But establishing this sort of sequence helps me stay on track in terms of marrying the whole thing together properly as the piece develops and evolves. Like if I run into proportional trouble, I just go back to the beginning, the shoulder, and remeasure everything out from there in sequence. If I'm doing it right, I can find the systemic error pretty quickly while also formulating a ready strategy for fixing it at the same time.

I do have to admit though that I have one quirk that I have to actively compensate for: I tend to make the back way too short in the armature stage and I've had to always lengthen it by cutting the sculpture in half and resetting the halves further apart. Very annoying! So now I just make the back "extra long" in armature stage and that usually solves the problem from the get go.

And absolutely, I check and recheck my measurements as I work to stay on track because it's so easy to skew things out of proportion as we smoosh around clay or change our minds. The more careful we are as we work though, the less errors we'll have to fix later. Absolutely, regularly check your proportions and reference points.

Just always remember that all proportional and alignment systems are merely guides, not gospel. They're starting points by which to build individual, breed, gender, age, or species-specific variations so keep that in mind as you measure. But we all have to start somewhere, right? So why not have a set system to serve as a baseline by which we can better determine all the variations we'll encounter?

Ending Thoughts

See, once you have a base measurement such as the head length, putting together the rest of the sculpture isn’t so hard! The real trick is just doing your homework ahead of time so you know how to tweak these measurements when it comes time to sculpt. Preparation is key! It’s also important to use these guidelines to study lots of individuals, breeds, ages, species, and the genders so you can develop a hefty mental library of the possible options. Honing your Eye will always serve you well. And just as much, regularly checking your work against these measurements as you sculpt will keep your work from going sideways right under your nose. And above all, practice practice practice! Learn to apply these guidelines as standard operating procedure and pretty soon they’ll become second nature and you’ll find yourself not only having an easier time sculpting proportion, but becoming better able to pinpoint what’s so wonderfully different with all the possibilities! What a great way to get ahead, right?!

Proportion is the heart of beauty.

— Ken Follett

Measuring Proportion: Ahead Of The Game