I've been sifting through my reference photos today to find images of people on horseback. I found a few that a fellow art friend of mine had given me which depicted horses and riders at Appleby Horse Fair. One photo in particular grabbed my attention. It was of a horse being ridden out of a deep river and up onto the riverbank. The young lad riding it was leading a younger horse with a lead rope behind him.

I was drawn to the powerful pose of the horse trying to make its way out of the water and the strength of the boy trying to control the horse he was riding and leading the younger horse. I swapped the lead rope with a sword and opted to leave the other horse out of the drawing. That's the beauty of artistic license 😊.

I created two drawings of the same image and revisited some of the drawing exercises I've been doing over the past few weeks. The first one (above) was drawn using my dominant right hand and the second (below) using my non-dominant left hand. An 8B graphite stick was used to create both. I also set myself a time limit of 15 minutes for each. 

I took on board what I had learnt on day 92 and broke the human form down into a simple stick figure and then added the flesh around it. This is just as I'd been doing with the drawings of the horses over the course of the project. Working in this way, I've found, enables me to quickly work out the rough structure first  before refining and adding in any detail.