Breaking up the image of the horse into simple shapes and lines has been an absolute game changer for me over the past few days. I realise that things are made up of simple shapes such as circles, rectangles, cylinders and lines but for some reason I've never felt the need to use this method so prominently in the first stages of a drawing. For years I've been drawing by eye. My eyes, along with a pencil or paint brush or whatever tool I'm using at the time, have been the only tools I've relied on for measuring in order to help me plan out the initial form of a subject. If only I'd have adopted the method of using shapes years ago, it would've saved a whole lot of time trying to get that structure drawn out. I'm not saying that drawing by eye is a bad thing but now I have another technique to use, the two can now work hand in hand to help enhance my practice.

I drew these onto a sheet of A2 cartridge paper using a 6B graphite stick. I recognise that there are still some issues with proportion in all of them but it's that idea of movement and being able to achieve it in a much looser way that is most important for me here. The third drawing below I tried to draw last week without the use of this process and ended up getting so frustrated that I threw it straight in the bin. Here, I managed to achieve it first time. This is proof that by spending a little more time looking at and thinking about the anatomy of the horse and the shapes within it can truly help develop my drawing in the long run.