Throwback Thursday: Horses

When I was around 12 years old I obtained four back issues of Modern Arabian Horse magazine. I pored over those thick magazines (and other horse magazines and books) every day, memorizing the horses' shapes and proportions, names, and bloodlines. I would practice identifying their colors, and analyze their tack. Yes, I was obsessed.

Not only did I study every one of those 200+ pages per magazine, but I copied the photos inside with my colored pencils, india ink, and watercolor paints. I drew horses standing, walking, running, grazing, horse heads, horse hooves, whatever caught my eye. And I got good. Eventually, I started drawing them without copying photographs, and many of the details stockpiled in my mind became pretty useful.

Most of the time I went for realism like this:

 But sometimes I made more simplified versions, such as this:

Whatever style directions I went in, that was the time when art went from being just something I enjoyed, to being something I enjoyed so much that I wanted to make a career of it. That time, from around 10-13 years old, was what I see as my artistic beginning.

-Cailey