hi!! can you please help with the pose for this? especially focus on the left arm and his bow, i just can’t figure out how to fix those. The initial intention was him aiming at something in the distance that’s about parallel with his eye level. Any shading advice you have would be helpful as well, i’m very inexperienced in that category. also yes i am aware that his longbow should be significantly bigger, it started out a decent size and then somehow shrunk to this by the end 😅 thanks so much, i really appreciate all the hard work y’all put into this blog!! (please tag me when you post this!!)
Hello! Thank you for your submission! So the first thing I wanna talk about with your picture - its very difficult to translate where your character is aiming at if you yourself don’t know where the object they’re aiming at is. There’s two things you need to do to combat this! One, figure out where your characters eyes are on their head - even if they’re looking away from the viewer you can still draw a line or a dot near where the eyes would be so you can keep their aim aligned with their sight. Two, Perspective grids. Expand out your canvas so there’s plenty of room to draw on (don’t worry you wont need to draw everything you can always crop it later) find where your character will be aiming at and put a point on it - use that point and draw straight lines to the eyes, arm, and arrow.
Next, take a good look at how archers hold their bow and arrow - the position changes depending on if the target is low or high, far or near. Try to find a couple references that match your pictures pose and angle. Often you will find the elbow (on the arm holding the arrow) is higher than the shoulder if the target is on equal ground with the archer and not extremely far away. However the further away the target is the lower the elbow gets and the higher the tip of the arrow points, to create an arc for the arrow to reach the target. Think of both the arms working together as a straight line that pivots with the arrow!
Also, when holding a bow you hold the bow itself with your non-dominant hand and the arrow with your dominant one. (EDIT: often, but not always - depending on which eye is your dominant eye + dominant hand - there’s some cool information about hand/eye dominance in archery here, there’s also ambidextrous to consider. Follow whatever works for your character and remember to stick with it!) The arrow crosses the body and rests on the same side of the bow as the arm holding the bow (not the arrow), like so;
This is because if you place it on the opposite side the bow itself blocks the arrow from view making it difficult to aim! Remember! Use references, study different images, how people hold their bows and always always always know where you’re aiming at! Good luck with your picture! c:
- mod pixielart
