40 Drawings in 40 Days – #8 – Trojan Horse

Sigh.  Another horse.  Remember I suck at drawing horses.

Thankfully this particular horse was not representing a living creature but was instead constructed by the Greeks as their sneaky way of invading the besieged city of Troy. Nevertheless, the sketch gave me quite a lot of difficulty.  I felt it had to have the proportions of a horse and be clearly horse-shaped but also look blocky so as to not resemble anything organic.  There was a great deal of scribbling and erasing and scribbling and erasing.

Let us just pause a moment and reflect on the daftness of the myth of the Trojan Horse, shall we?  Apparently historians, classicists and archaeologists alike have all pondered the grains of truth that might be contained in the legend.  Perhaps it was really a battering ram or perhaps it is a symbol for an earthquake.  Those are some of the theories.  Putting that aside, however, and focusing just on the literary story, we have a group of people who have been under siege in their city for a decade (if memory serves) who awake one day to find that the Greeks who have been hammering them for all those years have unexpectedly and inexplicably disappeared, leaving behind a wooden horse by way of an apology for the inconvenience caused.  Not thinking this remotely suspicious, the wooden horse is then brought into the city only for the Greeks, hidden inside, to disembark, slaughter everyone and finally claim a victory in the Trojan War.  A War, lest we forget, which was precipitated by a randy Prince making off with some other ruler’s wife.  It’s deep stuff.

Finally I got a shape I was happy with but still something was lacking.  I left the sketch sitting for a while waiting for a flash of inspiration.  Gift.  That was the element that was missing.  The whole idea that an enemy would retreat and leave a present in their wake was the crucial detail that would complete my drawing.  A neatly tied bow in a ribbon and a gift tag were added.  Job done.

Fingers crossed for no more horses in this drawing challenge.

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