Friends, it's time for a courageous conversation about abusive donkey drawing. No, not donkeys drawing cruelly heavy loads, but badly drawn donkeys and - gasp! - tutorials on how to badly draw a donkey. My recent online search clearly indicates there is a lot of interest in donkey drawing techniques. Unfortunately, the tutorials largely appear to be done by people who have never actually seen a donkey. Much like the early artists who drew fantastically weird New World animals, these samples of artistic splendor are chimeras of sorts: Goat-headed donkeys, and horse-necked donkeys, and donkeys with such weird proportions and oddly-placed features that even Picasso would be pained to see them.
So here I am, not as an accomplished artist, but as a donkey owner who wants you, dear reader, to know the characteristics that distinguish a donkey from, say, a horse or a mule or a goat - what gives a donkey its donkeyness. With a little help from Odelia, my donkey-in-residence, I shall offer my best anatomical advice on donkey creation. I've patiently measured my very patient Odelia to provide actual proportions as a reference (see diagrams towards the end) so that you may have a quick reference for your future donkey creations. Using photo references is all well and good, but relying solely on those references won't give you a reliable sense of donkey perspective.
Donkeys aren't just horses with long ears. They aren't mules, either. Oh, what a dagger to my equine-loving heart to see writers and captioners of photographs and artists labeling something as a "donkey" when it is clearly a mule, and vice versa. Let's look at the differences.
Although there are several varieties and flavors of donkeys, ranging from adorable spotted Sicilian donkeys to mammoth jacks and onagers and woolly Poitou donkeys, I'll focus on the humble desert burro that is doubtless familiar to anyone who has read Brighty of the Grand Canyon or watched Treasure of the Sierra Madre or visited iconic Oatman, Arizona. Although the shade of their color varies, their basic shape and coat pattern is largely the same. Their most recognizable coat color is a basic grey. Odelia, our lovable Lady of the Bray here at Rancho Chupacabra, is all that: an adopted BLM donkey in the typical grey color. Donkeys also have what's called a "mealy" pattern: They're lighter on the underside of the belly and groin than they are above it. Note that they have thicker, coarser coats during the winter, and slicker, finer coats during the summer.
Let's start at the head. Everyone knows donkeys have long ears! But donkeys don't have pointy ears like Arabians, folks. The tops of their ears are somewhat rounded. Quit drawing pointy-eared donkeys! The ears of a desert burro are rimmed with black. Their heads are generally shorter and heavier than a horse's or mule's. They don't have pointy little noses, either. I've seen a lot of artists drawing petite-nosed donkeys and you have to study the picture for a bit to realize it isn't intended to be a goat. Donkeys - in general - don't have dished faces, either, but rather straight, pragmatic-looking faces. If they do have a dish, it's going to be subtle, not concave Arabian profiles.
Donkeys have pronounced brow lines above the eyes, and generally there's adorable floof that drifts off the top of those ridges. Their eyes are set at a different angle from a horse, as well. And those eyes, which generally have either a mischievous twinkle or an Eeyore-esque woebegone pout, are surrounded by a markedly lighter shade than the rest of their face. Similarly, there's a distinct delineation between the top part of their face with its coarse, longer hair and the muzzle, which has a smoother, velvety texture. Their nostrils are different from a horse's, as well, with a pronounced nasal ridge above the nostril. Don't forget to shade the area. Their mouths are generally shallow. Although they do sometimes have a bit of a star on the forehead - one of my donkey exes, Olivia, had that feature - it's not prevalent. However, there's a distinctive star-shaped whorl of hair on their forehead generally set just below the eyes.
Moving on to their neck: They don't have graceful, long, arched necks. Neither are they hamsters; they DO have necks, people. But the crest of the neck - that top line - is pretty darned straightish (and sometimes, in over-fed donkeys with "fat pads," the neck is concave or "crestfallen). And on top of that straightish neck is a short, erect mane. It doesn't grow like a horse's and flop over; it stands up in a scruffy mass like a zebra's. It's generally darker than the rest of the donkey. On your typical grey desert burro, it is a shade of sunburned black or burnt umber. The crest of the neck, from base of ear to withers, is twice as long as the underline of the neck, from jowels to chest.
The neck-bone is attached to the shoulder-bone, and that shoulder is straighter and shorter than a horse's. The withers - that arched protrusion between neck and back - is quite flat on a donkey, compared to a horse, and on burros, there's a dark linear marking that extends from the withers downward. In Christian lore, that line is said to be a cross bestowed upon the donkey for carrying Mary as she was seeking shelter just before the birth of Jesus. Why is it called a cross? Because it intersects their dorsal stripe, which extends from the top of the head down the center of the donkey all the way back to the end of the tail. You can see it in the photo of the donkey's tail, below.
Donkey backs are fairly flat and proportionately longer than a horse's in comparison to front end and rumps. And the rumps? They aren't round and apple-butted and luscious examples of big booty. (Big ass ass? Don't get me started.) They're angular, narrow from the rear, and they slope downward in a flat line. And on the back end of them, there's a tail that is NOT a luxurious mass of long tail hair. They are scruffy tails with about as many bristles as an old man's ear until you get to the meager collection of slightly longer hair at the end. Don't draw a yak tail on your donkey! Donkey tails look like this.
Moving down the donkey legs, now, note that your standard grey desert burro doesn't have white socks. They don't even have rear chestnuts. They don't have graceful long legs, but they reach the ground. And where they contact the ground are hooves that are more upright than a typical horse. The pasterns are not as sloped as a horse's, either. Don't put goat hooves on your donkeys, either. They aren't cloven, although sometimes donkeys will act like the devil.
Proportions
Just as in drawing people, knowing general or average proportions can be useful in evoking realism. Individuals obviously have variations in proportions; that's what make us unique. Knowing proportions can help you know what makes an animal look younger, or older, too. In the descriptions below I've tried to either avoid, or to explain, specific terminology on the parts of the equine to make it more accessible to non-horsey-people.
Head and Face:
From the front: The ears, as the most distinctive feature, are a useful point of reference. The ear is roughly 10% longer than the widest point of the face, which is just above the eyes. The ears are roughly half the length of the face. The widest point of the face is just slightly under half the length of the face. If you start with a kite-shaped diagram, as many of us were taught to draw horses long ago, the distance from the base of the ear extending diagonally to the top of the opposite eye is somewhat longer than half of the distance from the base of the ear to the top of the opposite nostril; the base of ear to top of opposite eye is just shy of the length of the ear.
The top of the donkey's eye is 1/3 of the way down the length of the head (from poll to lips). The ears are roughly 1/2 the length of the head.
From the side: The widest part of the face, just below the eyes and extending from the front of the face to the jowels where they meet the neck, is just over half the length of the long part of the head, from behind the ears to the tip of the muzzle.
The ears, if measured from the side, are slightly longer than they are if measured from the inside. In other words, if you're measuring the ears at the center of the head, they're shorter than if you measured them from the side of the head.
Neck: The topline of the neck - the crest, or silhouette of it at top - is TWICE as long as the bottom line of the neck. This means that from the side, the entire length from where the neck meets the chest to the front of the face is just about the same length as the distance from the top of the neck from behind the ears to the withers. The neck where it joins the head is shorter from top to bottom than the neck where it joins the chest.
Withers: The donkey's "cross" or dark shoulder stripe is at the withers. The shoulder itself is straighter than the horse's shoulder; the ideal horse has a 45 degree slope to the shoulders, while the donkey is not as sloped.
Back: The back is longer from withers to the high point of the rump than the neck is from ears to withers. Compared to horses, donkeys are long backed.
Body: Visualize a line from the bottom of the muscle that's just above the front leg to the withers. This length is shorter than the distance from the hoof line to that same muscle. In other words, the legs are longer than the body mass from leg to withers. From the front of the chest (where it meets the neck) in a straight line to the rump, parallel to the ground, is a distance that's almost the same length as the total height of the donkey from ground to withers. They're long-bodied animals.
Let's Draw our Burro!
Okay, let's do a quick step-by-step!
Here's a fairly straightforward reference photo of Odelia. For this quick exercise, let's just do the head and neck. Make corrections as you go along to keep the proportions right. Remember to utilize negative space to see the lines and angles more accurately (focus on, for example, the shape formed outside the donkey, such as the slightly rounded area where the underside of the head meets the underside of the neck.) Pro-tip: You don't need to include extraneous objects, like halters, fence posts, and other items in the original photographs you use. Pet peeve: People who take a cute photo of a donkey sticking its head partly through two slats of wood, and draw it with the wood obscuring its cute little head. The joy of drawing is YOU can interpret what you're portraying.
1. Draw your donkey's face and ears, remembering the proportions above. Use the ear length as a guide for the proportions to follow.
2. Draw in the muzzle and jowels (jaws).
3. Draw the eyes and accent the browline.
4. Draw the delineation between the muzzle and the upper part of the face.
5. Add the nostril, remembering the deep shadowing around the side and lower end of it.
6. Fluff up the ears and draw in the dark border that extends around most of each ear.
7. Draw the underline where the head connects to the neck; draw the upper line of the neck, keeping it straight.
8. Add the upright, scruffy mane and forelock. Shade your drawing appropriately, going in the direction of the coat. Congratulations! You've done a donkey portrait.
Note: From this point forward are instructions on drawing the rest of the donkey.
9. Draw in the shoulder and the flat, low withers. Shade in the vertical cross at the withers.
10. Draw the back. Keep it fairly straight.
11. Draw the front legs. Remember: Donkeys have joints! The bone above the knee is longer than the bone below the knee (the cannon bone). At the bottom of the cannon bone is another joint, called the fetlock. Below the fetlock is a slightly angled distance connecting it to the hoof; this angled section is the pastern.
12. Draw the underbelly. It is longer than the length of the back.
13. Draw the hind legs. They, too, have joints. The hock is the large joint above the cannon bone and bends in the opposite direction from the front knees. Below the cannon is the fetlock, just as in the front legs, and below the fetlock is the pastern that attaches to the hoof.
14. Draw the scrawny rump. Don't forget to shade the point of the hip.
15. Draw the scrawny, scruffy excuse of a tail.
Voila! A whole donkey. Now add your shading to indicate the hair, making sure you go with the flow of the coat.
Supplies
For the purpose of the illustrations included here, I used a Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth Progresso 6B woodless graphite pencil. I love these pencils! You can buy them here. Note: This is an affiliate link, meaning I may earn commissions from purchases made through this link (and for which I thank you tremendously for helping keep the donkeys in oats.)
I also used a plastic eraser - in pastel, of course, because who can resist pretty erasers? You can buy them here (affiliate link).
Now, go forth and create your own donkeys! If you'd like a mule tutorial, leave a comment. Also see this post for further info on drawing equines: What Horsemen Want Artists to Know
Copyright (c) 2024 Marcy J. Miller * All rights reserved * No part of this content may be reproduced without the express permission of the author * Thank you for stopping by!
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