OKAY so many people have been asking me tips on how to draw CENTAURS!
So here is a step by step post of my shitty pictures because I didn’t think that taking pictures of a sketch in the dark would be a bad idea!
Basically, what you need to draw a centaur is:
1. Patience. Many times one just gives up on the first try because it’s hard. Everything can be hard, you just have to put your mind to it and get it done!
2. Knowledge of human and horse anatomy! If what you’re aiming for is a natural looking centaur, studying and sketching the anatomy of both parts is fundamental to get to that final result! @hubedihubbe ‘s centaurs and @what-the-floofin ‘s centaurs are a perfect example of what I mean, go check them out!
3. REFERENCES!! I cannot stress this enough, and any artist giving tips knows this: REFERENCES ARE KEY! Even if you have studied the anatomy and everything, there are still some poses that might seem tricky, and here is a reference to help!
4. Another important thing I keep seeing, is people drawing directly. NOOOO!!!
Don’t be afraid to doodle the pose before, do the outlines and THEN, only then complete it. Only by doing the basic construction lines you can see what is wrong with what you’re doing, either it be the pose, or the size of the upper body, or proportions themselves. Don’t be afraid to do them!
5. And finally, the shitty 5 minute centaur doodles I did for this specific post:
First off, you want to draw the head. The head is the starting point of everything, because through the head proportions the rest of the human body is made. You want to leave space for the rest of the body, because centaurs can take a lot of space!
Then I do the rest of the body. The lines that divide the body are a “head” in lenght. The hips are just sketched out because we’re putting the horse body under that
Here I do a quick outline of the horses body, just to make sure the size is coherent with the human body. One can choose to make a big horse body, but this is usually to avoid making too-small-horse bodies.
After that I doodle out the position I want the legs in, again, looking at proportions of where the knee is. The arms should be in a position that more or less mirrors the leg movement. If a centaur is jumping, don’t keep the hands down, it makes the pose look unnatural. This is just a random casual pose.
Once I’m satisfied with the position I draw the leg and I enhance the final outline. You can still see the construction lines underneath, but the final outline stands out more.
Back legs are the trickiest imho. I corrected them again in the next step, realizing I did the butt slightly too big ^^”.
Voilà, here is the horse body all fleshed out. I prefer finalizing the horse body first because I find it the hardest to do, but one can start with the human body too!
Speaking of, here is a quick sketch of how I do the facial structure outline.
Here we have the final doodle of the female centaurette! I realized later that this pose is a little tricky unless she’s trotting ^^”
While we’re at it, I thought I might do a frontal version of this too! Same applies here, for the head. I divide the face in 3 as a reference for nose, eyes and mouth. I start with a circle, to determine the width of the head, and then add a chin under the circle to decide the general shape of the face.
Honestly this pose isn’t the best... I should have used a reference! XD
I widened the leg a little, since it was really too thin ^^” I also added a really quick shading on the back legs to add a little depth.
To build the centaur main structure you don’t really need to draw the arms straight away, that’s why I added them later. The most important part is the torso.
Again, an outline from the front of the facial features.
Many people I know struggle with drawing a nose from the front. Most of it actually comes from the shadow it casts, so when just drawing lineart most of the nose doesn’t actually get drawn at all! What I do is draw the nostrils and hint at the shape of it, but that’s it ^^”
The rest of the face over here :3
After doing all the facial deets I do the actual face shape, and since this one’s a boy I made his chin a little squared. The hair is one of the last things I add, since hair is one of the easiest things to do, especially in a five minute doodle, because hair is basically a scribble at that point B)
And here’s our finished boy!
So, this is my little tutorial! I hope this was in anyway helpful! ^__^
