Take a given, like the length of this doe s head
rear and measure how many times from chest brisket to butt that measure goes. Here 2-1/2 times
Height from chest to shoulder is about 1-1/2 heads high
You can see from shoulder to just above knee, and just below knee to hoof another two heads, not counting knee. You would repeat the process for the back legs as well.
There are a number of ways to analyze this bad boy! One with your eyes follow the forehead down past the nose, then jawline out and see where both lines converge. Note distance the back hips are here from the convergence point.
Relative to THIS photo, note the eye is directly above the edge of the neck and throat. Note the distance the eye sits from tip of one ear and front of the other, nearly the same. Note how far the nose tip is from the front antler tine and side of body to back tine.
How might we determine the height of the antlers from base of the nearest brow to tip of highest tine?
If you accurately determined the distance from the eye to the lower jaw, you could use that as a measurement, and you see nearly three times.
Or if you determined the proper distance from the nose to back of the eye you could then use that to measure, and see that distance comes to two such measures.
Carefully study the angle of the main mass of antler coming out of the head, and the major beam thereby jutting forward and up.
Look for shape relationships, in this case the very obvious triangulation that gives strength and proportion to the antlers.
Observing this buck, the height from eye to top of hip goes twice from eyes to top of antlers. From the hip down to the front of the chest.
To check the body with from this quarter turn frontal view use the thickness of the neck, or the width of the antlers. Or we see the width of the antlers almost equally the length of the body from this view.
Once again note all the triangular relationships. The symmetry and geometry.
Interestingly, we knew that the length of a deer s head from tip of nose to back of head went into the body 2-1/2 times, but here we see the width of ear tip to ear tip in this photo equals 2-1/2 the distance.
Note the back hips are level with this doe s top of nose, and observe and determine the angle with hips drop down to shoulder. See the relationship to the hips & shoulder with the chest and belly.
Study ears carefully, and know they give clues to the mood of the deer, and what concerns the deer. Here, the doe is alert, ears forward, listening to YOU! The length of the ear on the right is near equal to the width of the eyes, and distance from top of eyes to bottom of mouth.
Note how far out from the nose the antlers extend, note how high the main beams are from the top of the buck s head.
Use the nose to back of head as a measure, see from where jawbone and neck meet that the head/measure goes nearly 3-3/4 times the length back, or about 2-1/2 times again just from front shoulders to rear end.
Here is one of my deer painted for a shirt design, and I often visually an oval to picture and plan out my buck s antlers. Often
Often it will be said of a buck that it has a nice basket rack! and you can see here where that visualization well comes from. It will help you better represent a buck to keep that visual in mind as well.
The following slides show examples of some of my past deer paintings early works in acrylics and later studies in oils. All works are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without permission.
Another of mine in a print series- Ain t Seen A Thing All Day!
another past shirt design of mine
A popular past shirt design of mine
An acrylic of an old doe that sorta took to me well, to the peppermint candies she knew I had while photographing!
I used to paint quite a few commissions called Sporting Portraits
I ve done a few small oil studies of recent this one 8 x 10
another small oil study
a 5 x 7 oil