Centaurs - Blog Posts

FRESHLY BAKED TAURS

get em while they're fresh!

Don’t forget - Draw a Centaur Day is coming up in less than two weeks!

And if you don’t draw, you could always sculpt, sew, knit, crochet, write a story or poem, compose a song, make a gingerbread centaur - whatever!

Just thought I'd dump some stuff here.

I'm just gonna have this as helpful notes- I would love to draw taurs-

SHAKES YOU how do you draw taurs. i need help i genuinley cant wrap my head around the anatomy of it. optionally i need help with fat taurs but any kind of taur is okay

Ooh, I love these sorta questions!!!

So there are two main things folks usually struggle with when it comes to drawing taurs as a whole. 1, they struggle with quadrupedal anatomy and 2. connecting the humanoid upper body to the quadrupedal lower body. Obviously there's no shame in either of these things, drawing four legged animals, especially if you're more used to the anatomical structure of something more humanoid is quite tough! And finding the sweet spot where humanoid and quadruped meet to make a taur is a bit of a struggle for folks who're still figuring it out.

So! The first thing you wanna do really is just familiarize yourself with quadrupedal anatomy. Look at the skeleton of the creature you're trying to taur and see how things like their limbs bend differently or how they're just differently naturally posed as compared to someone who walks upright.

This is a very simplified skeleton of a cat, but you can pretty immediately see how differently everything bends. And I'm not saying it's something you have to perfectly master to know how to draw a taur (especially when you get to drawing fat taurs), but i highly recommend becoming familiar with how a quadrupedal body is structured, the silhouette of most animals is quite misleading! And absolutely use reference!

Heck, our first go at drawing taur Riley was super heavily referenced (I'll even share the ref image if anyone is interested!), and this still came out real jank. Practice makes perfect!

As for connecting the upper body to the lower body, this is a little more subjective and up to you, but I'll lay out some general guidelines.

Generally speaking, you wanna put the humanoid torso where the base of the neck is, the front of the torso kinda merging with the rest of the taur body just after the tummy, basically just before the crotch starts.

As for the back, you're gonna want to shoot for just shy of where the butt starts, waist having curved back outwards. It gets a little awkward if you go higher or lower than that. And obviously, you wanna make sure the torso is firmly planted in the center of where the neck should be, ehehe.

That's pretty much the basics though! As always, i recommend looking at how your favorite taur artists draw the creatures and studying off of that! Familiarize yourself with quadrupedal anatomy, and use reference!! You will absolutely get it down with time. I will absolutely cover fat taurs if there's interest in it, and ofc, lemme know if there's anything I missed or need to go over! I hope this helps!

Finally set up my adoptable shop on DeviantArt. The above characters are all still on sale as of March 5, 2018 (and likely will stay that way for a while considering the adoptables market). My DA account can be viewed by clicking here.

Drew it in summer.

I shouldn't have watched Disney's Pastoral Symphony's Greek mythology segment of Fantasia before going to the Welcome Home website for updates.

Oh well....

Character belongs to @partycoffin

Horses are really fragile animals. Is it still a death sentence for a centaur if one of their equine limbs gets hurt? Or can they help it somehow?

Oh god, now I'm thinking of amputees and how those would work

Horses are SUPER fragile, or maybe more like delicately balanced.. but particularly their crazy spindle-legs which centaurs get to deal with! But a big part of why hurt legs are a death sentence for horses has less to do with “It kills them” and more to do with quality of life, which a centaur can get around! A horse with a broken leg doesn’t understand it can’t put ANY weight on that leg for an extended period and will attempt to go about their daily life and act normally, which basically guarantees re-injuring the bad leg and a high chance of injuring the other 3 legs as they try to cope with the change in balance and weight distribution. It all leads to a really poor quality of life with almost no chance of truly healing properly. The story of all they did trying to save Barbaro the racehorse is a long sad story that illustrates a lot of the issues even with modern veterinary medicine with trying to deal with a broken leg in horses.

Thankfully with centaurs, They understand the need for healing, are able to manage their own quality of life and have the gear to support themselves in the time it takes for the injury to heal!

Also perfectly good for long term use in the case of aging, amputation, or general disability! Which is common with the front legs and lower backs of centaurs given the unusual stresses caused by their body-plans. They were created with thicker and more robust front legs to cope with the permanent added weight of the torso instead of a horse head, but injury and disability in that area is still very common!

Injuries to the hind are less common and usually less severe, and given the hind legs bear less direct weight than the front they can usually get away with wraps and limping until it gets back to weight-bearing. Something like a rear amputation or ruptured tendon would probably require a custom harness/brace attached to a wheel like these and/or basically a peg leg!