Horse to Human Scale

Just a quick visual reference for horse-to-human scale and structure for anyone who is interested. Hopefully it's useful! Please note that I'm no expert on this subject and I'm not pretending to be, these are only the scale things which I have noticed from my own field study of the scale of horses to humans (aka, comparing things, like the fact that horses have noses as big as our heads!)

PLEASE NOTE: ALWAYS pay attention to the breed/type of horse that you are drawing! If it's a pony or a draft breed, proportions will be different from a normal horse and other factors, such as your human being abnormally small (like my character Ki lol) or abnormally tall do factor in. These notes are for humans and horses of typical height (height in horses being determined by distance from the ground to the top of their withers.) Most horses are around 15hh. Most humans are around 5'5" ft. A hh ('hand') is approximately 4 inches.

I am always learning and updating the way I draw things. This is only me passing on my current (late 2011) formula for drawing this tricky subject. Hopefully some people find it helpful, even though my horses tend to lean decidedly towards the draft end of the equine spectrum.

The structure here also applies to all other hoofed animals in basic form. (Ungulates.) I recommend paying attention to what an animal's skeleton looks like for figuring out structure. It's not uncommon for me to roughly draw an animal's skull!

^{***technically the vertebrae in a horse's neck comes down from lower than how I drew it here, but this still works. You can see the proper way a horse's neck bones go here-> [link]}

(c)Rosanna P. Brost All Rights Reserved.