My playful gradient.horse project went viral - but exploded in different online communities at different moments. This gives us the opportunity to explore how people coming from these communities draw horses.
The horses shown here were selected randomly on a day when traffic from each site dominated - with non-horses, empty doodles, and transgressive images removed. Around 4% of all drawings turned out to be of penises - but this percentage differs greatly between the online communities.
It all started with a post on metafilter.com:
metafilter.com
a collective blog from the US.
5200 visitors, peak on 17 January 2026
4.2% of the drawings depict penises
typical horse drawings from Metafilter:
To better see the drawings you can disable the leg movement:
thompsonblog.co.uk
A right wing political blog from the UK. Somehow the spark went from a left wing US website to a right wing UK one.
2200 visitors, peak on 23 January 2026
8.6% of the drawings depict penises
typical horse drawings:
tumblr
Is known as a place where people who can draw hang out.
73000 visitors, peak on 8 February 2026
0.6% of the drawings depict penises
typical horse drawings:
bluesky
41000 visitors, peak on 10 February 2026
4.0% of the drawings depict penises
typical horse drawings:
hacker news
30000 visitors, peak on 14 February 2026
8.1% of the drawings depict penises
1.6% depict swastikas and/or racial slurs (very few were produced by other audiences)
typical horse drawings:
The New York Times
49000 visitors, peak on 19 March 2026
1.1% of the drawings depict penises
typical horse drawings:
Drawing a horse is hard. I’d be the first to admit it. However, this archive does show some noticeable differences in how people approach the horse drawing problem. This of course is not scientific research - it is not controlled for age, gender or whether visitors drew with a mouse, finger, or a pen. Any of these factors might explain some of the differences.
Still, Tumblr users seem unusually comfortable with drawing. Many draw not just skilfully but playfully: they exaggerate, tell small jokes, and explore what the limited medium can do. A certain fluency in drawing is probably needed to allow this kind of play.
Visitors from communities that seemed less comfortable with drawing also produced more penises. My current theory is that if you have not drawn anything since school, your drawing vocabulary may remain rooted there. When drawing as an act of self-expression is unfamiliar, a dick joke might offer a quick and easy answer to the stare of a blank canvas.
An archive can show differences more readily than it can explain them. Comparing communities is fun, but it’s even more fun to explore how a drawing is influenced by its medium. How does gradient.horse itself form what is being drawn?
I like to think that gradient.horse is one of the rare spaces where creation is easier and more inviting than consumption. The imperfect leg movements add whimsy to horses drawn at any skill level, acting as a sort of a skill equalizer. The animation does not correct the drawing; it meets it at the same level of awkwardness. This imperfection and limitation is freeing and is probably key to a successful drawing game - if you were asked to draw a horse using any and all available artistic tools, you probably wouldn’t even start.
Contrast is just as important.
When I was making gradient.horse I started with the gradient.
The gradient was big. Eternal. Slow. So big it could fill the sky.
Naturally, it needed the horses. Small, tiny even, imperfect, as if drawn by a hungry five-year-old. They moved oddly.
It would have cost me nothing to make them move smoothly. But no. It is the eternal that moves smoothly. Here, on the earth, the imperfect hand-drawn creatures move as imperfectly as they are drawn.
And thus we have the huge, colorful, perfect, smooth gradient - and the whimsical, tiny, imperfect, jittery horses. And in between perfection and whimsy, in between eternal beauty and hobbling finger-drawn mares, there is room for us to be human.
Come draw a horse.