Do not lean back when shooting!

 

Many mistakes in today's drawing, which isn't a bad drawing expect the archery part in it. Which is, the main part unfortunately. 

Mistakes:

1. The bow is way too thick, this elf woman wouldn't be able to shoot with it, nor anybody else. Especially a bow this short should be much thinner, at least by half.

2. There is nothing where the bowstring would attach, it just disappears inside the ends of the bow. The bostring in reality forms loops that are put in nocks in the bow's ends.

3. The arrowtip is huge, too large for this arrow shaft. The arrow is also too short, or drawn too much back, since the arrowtip touches the bow's arc, which it shouldn't do.

4. The arrow goes on the right side of the bow, which is very unusual (I would almost say wrong, but there are a few rare medieval illustrations like this) for Mediterranean style shooting, and she should hold the arrow there with her thumb if shooting from the right side, otherwise the arrow would drop off too easily.

5. Mediterranean draw uses three fingers, she seems to use only two, which is unnecessarily harder. The bowstring doesn't seem to go behind the drawing fingers, rather through them.

6. The fletching of this arrow is pathetic, the feathers are both way too small to offer anything to the arrow (their purpose is to guide the flight of the arrow, making it more accurate), and localted way too back on the arrowshaft, so much so that they touch the drawing hand, which they shouldn't do.

7. She is not wearing a quiver nor any spare arrows anywhere. Not a very wise choice.

 

I also want to point out another thing, about her posture.

 

8. The posture is all wrong. People often draw female archers leaning backwards from their pelvis, to make them look sexier, but this is not a good posture for shooting a bow. Rather they should be leaning forwards, as was done both historically and today. This employs the big back muscles (stronger than just the arms), which gives maximum power to the shot. I have included a picture from a book "Archery Anatomy" (1995) by Ray Axford that depicts the correct posture for a modern archer that uses his back muscles more by leaning forward. I replicated the lines of his body in green, and the lines of the elf girl in red and superimposed them on top of each other so you can clearly see how much differene there is in the postures.

I have a request to draughtsmen and -women, please start to draw correct positions, and do not make your (lady) archers lean back to make them sexier, since it's just bad archery.

Sometimes you need to lean back in order to shoot very high, but this is not the case with this or any other drawing that employs this trope of backwards leaning women.