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.

You believe in horoscopes, but not in physics?

 

Hi, I'm back again, from a summer vacation. I will be on and off from this blog from time to time. I need to take breaks in order to continue mocking other people's efforts. That's hard you know! ;)

This time I will criticise this Sagittarius tattoo concept drawing. Let's get to the mistakes:

1. The most obvious one, the bow is not bending, but instead it has a rubber band string. This is so frustrating, and could be corrected by looking at a single photograph of a real person shooting a real bow. But no, many people think looking at reference is cheating and somehow not artistic. But in reality all the real artists have always used reference from real life. You should do that too if you want to become an artist someday.

2. These ugly blobs are taken from modern wooden bows, but now their shape serves no purpose, they look horrendous, and they incorporate too much space of the bow's arc compared to the limbs. Since these parts do not bend (if this bow would bend at all), they waste a lot of useful bending space of the limbs if they are too big like here.

3. This is not a proper draw. The string goes only under the ring finger. Nobody has ever done this, because it doesn't work. Reference people, reference!

4. The elbow is too bent, losing a lot of energy to try to draw the bow like this (this is supposed to be full draw).

5. The whole posture of the figure is awful, and wrong in many ways. Nobody shoots like this, arching their back like in this drawing. This is only drawn to make the female character look sexy, and it's wrong. The back should be straight, and perhaps the upper body tilting forward from the pelvis (the back still straight), to give maximum muscle power to the shot.

6. The arrow goes on the "wrong" side of the bow. This is difficult, because everything is wrong in this picture. First of all the archer is left handed. I have stopped giving this a mistake point due to several complaints by the (left handed?) readers. I know there are left handed archers, and always have been, but I don't think people drawing these images think about that, they just draw the image whichever way looks more pleasing to them. Since no care has been given to handedness, I used to mark it as a mistake. But because the very best historical archers would probably shoot both hended, I have stopped giving this a mistake point. This character is supposed to shoot with the Mediterranean draw, although it's drawn completely wrong. If we suppose it would be right, and she's a left-hander, then the arrow in most cases should go from the other side of the bow. There is a heated debate going on in the internet regarding the sidedness of arrows in historical Mediterranean style shooting. The fact is that most of the times the arrow was on the left side of the bow (with right handed Mediterranean shooters), so here is should be on the right side for a left-hander. But it's not. So it's a mistake in my books.

The only good thing about this is the hip quiver, instead of the ubiquitous fantasy back quiver.

Dryads from Witcher's world

I love the world of the Witcher. I read the first book not too long ago, and I've played through the first and second games. Unfortunately I haven't yet had time to read rest of the series as well as play the third game. But they are on my list as soon as I can manage to have some (read = a lot of) free time. I've also seen the first season of the Netflix series, but in my opinion it's not nearly as good as the books or games. It is too dull, too grey, not funny enough, and I hate the costumes, and some choices made in the casting. Geralt himself is fine, although he could do more than just grunt and be angry all the time. Hopefully the second season corrects the mistakes that are possible to correct.

I was pointed out recently that a post of mine that I thought of having been a half-orc woman, was actually a dryad from the Witcher 3's Gwent cards (a minigame inside the game). And it's true of course, how could I have missed that! Well, I haven't yet played the third game at all, and although this same dryad was in the first game, I didn't recognise her. I just didn't connect the dots in my mind. Generic female half-orcs do look similar, I will say in my defense. Anyway, my bad, now the blog post is correctly titled, and I got inspiration from that to make this post concerning the dryads in the world of Witcher.

 

This dryad is jumping while shooting. Hard, but certainly possible. The arching of the back that far is not good form though, much more power you get by leaning forwards from the pelvis with a straight back. But then again she's leaping in the air. The back arching this way is done to make her more sexy of course, since men are naturally drawn to arched backs like this, as science has shown. On to the archery mistakes:

1. If your bow has started to grow leaves, it's made of way too fresh wood! The bowstave should dry a long time before making a bow out of it, one year is not a bad time. Making bow out of fresh wood is a bad idea, since wood is a living material and the properties of the bow would change when the wood dries, ruining the bow's carefully designed performance abilities.
2. Making a bow out of a tree branch like this is also the worst idea. Real self bows are and always were made of one piece of wood, carved out of a tree trunk at least twice if not four times larger in diameter than the finished bow. So there's a lot of material to remove to make the bow in desired shape. Picking a sprout dividing into several branches is bad, as is the fact that this looks like the very tip of a tree, which would make it unsuitable for a bow. For example English longbows were made of the part of a yew tree where the heartwood and sapwood meet, to make the belly of the bow (heartwood) more resistant to pressure and the back of the bow (sapwood) more resistant to stretching.
3. The fistmele (distance between the bow handle and the bowstring) is way too big here. It should only be about hald of this distance. This bow has too short bowstring. It make the shot less powerful because of the wasted distance where the string could still pull the arrow forward.
4. Where are her arrows? There are no quiver or any spare arrows to be seen.

 

Eithné, queen of the Dryads and ruler of the Brokilon forest, as seen in the now defunct The Witcher Battle Arena illustration. The maker of this drawing has never seen human legs in his life, since the character has an entire leg growing out of her knee, the leg certainly doesn't start from the pelvis, like legs usually do. I know perpective and anatomy can be hard, but not this hard! Look at a human being, look at a photograph, look at a mirror, you have legs don't you?

Also the dryads are described as slender and small in the books, so how come this forest lady has silicone boobs?

On to the archery mistakes:

1. I searched for a moment where the bowstring actually goes. It is blurred in this image, in the ah-so-fashionable-motion-blur-effect, which they think makes drawings look like photos, but is just becoming annoying at this point since its serious overuse in concept art. It's a cheap Photoshop trick that requires no painting skills. But I was supposed to tak about archery stuff! Okay, okay, the bowstring does not touch the arrow. When the bowstring is released and is still angled like this, the arrow has not yet left the string. Only at the point when the bowstring is completely straight, thearrow leaves the string. What is drawn here cannot happen in reality.
2. This elbow is too high, and so is the shoulder of this same arm. It's bad form that does not use the back muscles correctly.
3. No spare arrows or a quiver anywhere, again. Do the dryads grow arrows out of themselves? Where do they come from?!? 
4. The bow handle is way too long. A bow is not a two handed weapon like a longsword, a space for only one hand is needed in the handle part. Too long handle takes space away from the bending arc of the bow, making it not as powerful as it could be.
   

 

 

 This picture I found from the Witcher wiki, and it was said to depict a dryad. It has grave mistakes:

1. The bowstring goes from the outside of the bow arm! This is very bad mistake, which not even a beginner would think of doing while actually holding a bow, but is alarmingly common in drawings. It happens so that the drawer first sketches the character and the bow in a certain position, and then don't realise where the bowstring should go. In some cases when the bow is canted to a ridiculous position, like completely sideways, there is no space for drawing the string under the arm, so they draw it over it thinking it must be so. It's wrong!
2. The arrow hand is upside down, grabbing the string the wrong way. We should see the palm of her hand in this picture. You might argue that maybe she's just placing the arrow there on the string like this and the changing her hand position, but I don't think the drawer has thought it that much.
3. The arrow is not nocked where it should be nocked. I drew a line to show you where the arrow should approximately be (if everything else would be correct with her bow handling, which isn't).
4. The back quiver. Not the most useful thing to have. Also making it even less useful you can put it on the wrong shoulder like this dryad has. Impossible to take the arrows from there. The length of the arm is just not long enough to draw arrows over the opposite shoulder. Also all the arrows in the quiver are broken, since they come out in a very wrong angle compared to the scabbard.

 

 

I know this is not a dryad, but a drawing of Braenn, a human woman, who was raised by the dryads. I just came by this picture, so decided to include it here because of the subject. Mistakes include:

1. Drawing the bow halfway while not shooting. One of the more common mistakes in drawings. Even a halfway draw is tiring to keep up, so no archer would ever do this. Traditional bows are not like modern compound bows where you can hold the bow for a long time while aiming. This girl is not even aiming, so what's the point of drawing the bow like this? There is none!
2. Two finger mediterranean draw, and the posture of the hand is very awkward. Three fingers would be better in this case.
3. A back quiver. Also on the wrong shoulder, so completely impossible to use.
4. The arrow is too short. The bow is half drawn, but there's not much arrow left to be drawn. It should be some twenty centimeters longer. Also the handle of the bow is unnecessarily long.

 

 

I will end this post with this lovely image of a dryad mother and her child, making arrows together. The picture is so lovely I don't want to ruin it with my red numbers, but it isn't without mistakes either:

1. The arrows are way too short. They should be almost double this length. The perspective alone cannot explain their shortness.
2. The feathers her child has gathered are lovely, but all different. You should use the feathers of the same bird (species) in an arrow, or at least very similar to each other (yes, sometimes people make the cock feather out of different species, but historically they tended to be all the same). Some species (like goose), are considered better for fletching arrows than others. You should even use the feathers from the same wing for the best results (so not mixing left and right wing feathers, since they curve in the opposite directions). Maybe the child didn't know this?
   
3. Why is she holding the thread between her teeth like that? I've fletched my own arrows with feathers and string, and I never needed to do this. I cannot understand what would be the point, since it's not even the end of the string. You can tighten it with you fingers too.

 

This is it for now, see you next time!

If you'd spent that time it took to grow that hair to practise archery, you'd be good already

This stance is entirely wrong. I see this a lot in beginners. The back should be more straight and the shoulder blades pulled together so that the chest muscles are opened more. Shoulders need to align with the arrow a lot more than this, the head should be kept straight on top of the spine, no need to cant it like this for aiming. You don't need to look down the arrowshaft, the aiming should be instictive. Of course it needs training, but who said archery is going to be easy? When you just learn not to lock your bowarm's elbow you won't even need the overly large arm guard anymore.

Stock photo archeress

I have nothing to say to this picture, other than mistakes of course:

1. This elbow should be pointing back and not to the side.

2. Sideways shooting. Now somebody is going to comment that canting the bow like this is possible. Yes it is, but why? There is no obstacles that would make it necessary in this image.

3. Beginner's mistake: keeping the index finger above the arrow.

4. No quivers were harmed during this photoshoot.

Note:
She has a strange grip of the arrow. It's not the traditional European "Mediterranean" grip, nor the widespread Asian "Mongolian" thumb grip. But it is a real grip, a pinching grip, although relatively rare one. It is used by some natives, and presumably ancient people's of Europe. It's really hard and requires a lot of finger muscles for the pinching, which this girl obviously doesn't have. But in this case it doesn't bother her since this bow (if it is even a bow and not a stick with a string) has about 10 pounds of draw weight.

The new Tomb Raider cosplay

Nice Lara Croft cosplay, but the archery should use some work.

Mistakes:

1. This elbow (of her right arm) should point higher up and backwards from the arrowshaft, not to the ground like this.

2. This elbow should not be bent in like this, it will lead to the bowstring hitting the forearm. The bow arm doesn't need to be exactly straight, just a little bit bent.

3. Take the forefinger off from the top of the arrow. It will hurt in release.

4. Three fingers are enough for the Mediterranean draw, four in unnecessary and might hamper the shot.

5.This bow is crooked (the upper limb in this photo should turn right and not left), and I believe it's not a real bow, but just a cosplay prop.

Neutral:
The quiver is okay. It's ugly, but Lara is supposed to make it herself in the bushes or something. And it's more of a hip quiver than a back quiver, so that's something I like.

Boobs and butt pose number million

This obviously World of Warcraft inspired (night) elf is as usual: A) female, B) scantily clad, C) has a horrible bow, D) doesn't know how to shoot. On to the mistakes:

1. This thing is what the maker of this image probably thought of as a bow. A quick look at a real bow however would've been immensely helpful in rendering the bow realistically. This "bow" is unbeliavable, and not in a good sense of the word. How does she even get her hand in the middle of the spiky thing to find the handle of the bow? Her hand must be ful of scars.

2. This bow doesn't bend. So it doesn't work. So it's not a real bow. But that we knew already.

3. The posture is very bad. The elbow should be drawn back.

4. There are no other arrows anywhere to be seen, nor an empty quiver. What she's going to shoot after this only arrow?

Bonus: the bowstring is coming apart soon.

Does anorexia lead you to lumbar lordosis?

This anorexia promotion disguised as fashion photography has some major issues with archery as well. On to the mistakes:

1. The Mediterranean draw uses three fingers to draw the bowstring, not four like here. A beginners mistake.

2. The arm should point backwards from the direction of the arrow. Lifting the elbow too high wastes a lot of energy. A beginners mistake.

3. This arrow is way too long for this woman. All the arrowshaft coming in front of the bow in a full draw is wasted material. Overly long arrows were in fact used, but only in hunting, and usually fishing, by some native tribes, for example in Amazonian rainforest. Which is by the way burning at the moment. Horrible! But to this European medieval shooting style overly long arrows do not belong.

4. Arching her back like this is not a good form for archery, or anything else than looking sexy in a photograph. Archers did indeed lean forward in the middle ages, but it involves hip hinging, and the back should be straight, not arched like you had a lumbar lordosis. Even when doing archery, the back is not supposed to be arched!

5. No other arrows anywhere to be seen tells that this model has just been given a bow and one arrow and she has never held a bow in her hand before.

By the way, the faux leather can't cover the fact that this bow is entirely modern in its construction.

Fifth hood in ten days, oh my!

This is my one hundreth post in this blog! 100! Yey! Or maybe I shouldn't be happy, since it means there's been a lot of bad renditions of archery in the Internet. I will not celebrate this with anything then. But I promise there will be more bad things to come. And you haven't even seen the most horrible yet!

Now to this time's post.

I'm getting tired of these dark hooded female archer characters. Can't you design something original for a change? Oh, no? Okay.

Mistakes:
The bow. It. Does. Not. Bend. Here. Real bows bend.
Otherwise than that, and the fact that she is in a middle of a ridiculous jump, and that she doesn't have any more arrows or a quiver, it's not that bad.

What is this madness?

This is the worst I've seen in a long time. Refreshing my memory, since Thursday, February 7th, this year. So not very long ago. Anyway, it makes me want to puke, and I hate puking.  

Mistakes:

1. This pukesy thing is probably supposed to be a bow of some kind but I really can't tell how. Needless to say, it wouldn't work in real life.

2. This ridiculous stringy string is made of rubber.

3. That sad joke of pulling the bow is so utterly awful I don't know if I should laugh or cry. I have nothing else to say.

Chaotic forest woman

Straight to the mistakes, I'm not in a mood far talking:

1. Sideways shooting. It's just wrong. It reduces the availabe space for draw, thus decreasing the flight of the arrow. Also the string arms' elbow is pointing to a wrong direction, it should be parallel to the other arm, pointing backwards.

2. What is this grip? The arrow seems to be between middle and ring fingers. This is not a grip anyone should use.

3. The arrowtip is too large and heavy and has unnecessary spikes. Spikes do not do more damage. It would be very expensive to forge this kind of arrowtips, and then they get lost anyway. Such a waste.

4. Arrows on the back. Pointing to a mishmash of directions. Also very strange shape of fletching.

Bodypaint elf woman

I wouldn't put my name under a picture like this. But some people have no shame. Or then they just have a different kind of mentality towards professional work. They have to feed their families, right?

I should've put a NSFW in the title, but I didn't. Since I don't believe in trigger warnings. They make people wimps who can't take anything without breaking.

So, this softcore pornographic image ("But it's ART when it has bodypaint!") also contains mistakes. And I'm not talking about just the plastic elf ears:

1. Since there are bigger mistakes. Like this isn't a bow at all. This is a piece of wood shaped vaguely like a bow. It's too short and doesn't thin towards the ends. The string is stretchy, obviously because the "bow" doesn't bend.
2. The stance is all wrong. The arms don't align at all, stringarms elbow is too low etc. Numerous mistakes.
3. This is a very strange grip. That means it's wrong.
4. The bowhand is also wrong. The arrow should be on top of the fist, not between middle and ring fingers.
5. The stick that plays the arrow doesn't have a tip, and it's fletching is too far back, interfering with the stringhand.
6. Holding an ugly serrated fantasy dagger (or any other weapon) in your bow hand is not a good idea. However there has been a practice (in Persia and maybe other neighbouring areas) to hold a scimitar (shamshir) in hand while shooting. But that is the stringhand, never the bowhand. A quity specialised technique, of which the people involved in making this picture come true would have never guessed existed. But interesting nonetheless.

Chibi elf with twisted body

I hate manga. I shouldn't say this, but I just did. There might be some good manga comics (manga = comics, I know!), but I hate this chibi style. I usually associate manga with chibi style (I do know there are other styles too, but they all have unnaturally big eyes), and I just hate it.

I hate this picture, not just because it's annoying chibi style, but because it represents archery so poorly.

Mistakes:

1. The whole stance is ludicrous, nobody shoots like this. The pelvis is turned forwards, even though it should be pointing sideways.
2. More of the wrong stance, the string arm should be at level with the other arm and the arrow, the right elbow should be pointing backwards.
3. This arrowtip weighs a ton and don't fly anywhere. Why would you also tie a ribbon to the arrow?
4. Keeping the index finger of the bow hand straight, to "guide" the arrow or something. A beginners mistake. Do people think it looks cool or something?
5. Bad quiver. That means a back quiver.

Glamour archery, not very glamorous

These are some glamour or fashion photgraphy shots of fashion models holding bows and arrows. Obviously they've never held a bow before and neither had the photographer or anyone else who was present. These are so bad that it hurts my eyes, glamour is million miles away from these photos. The looks and stances are not gracious, they look painful and deformed! You can even break your body if you shoot as wrong as these models, so don't do it.

The first to photos have exactly the same mistakes:
1. The line I've drawn there should be straight. Straight! These are like zig-zagged spirals. The string arm (right arm) should be much higher, parallel to the bow arm. Elbows of these women are pointing downwards, when they should be pointing straight to the back. All the power for the draw has now to be generated with the arm, which is a waste of energy. Instead the power should be generated from the bigger back muscles, as well as the arms (both of them).
2. The whole body of both of these women is twisted ina a deformed position. The pelvis is facing forward, when it should be facing sideways. The upper body, especially shoulders have the same problem. It is not possible to shoot like this. Why are they also leaning backwards so much, it doesn't look glamorous?
3. The third picture has some other mistakes. There are lines already, so I didn't have to draw them on the picture. The arrow should go on the same line as the arms. Now it does not. It's impossible to aim if the arrow and arms do not line. The grip of the arrow is very gentle, looks like this bow is nota bow but just a stick that bends and a string attached to it. The "arrow" (another stick) is also missing fletching, and its tip cannot be seen. Pelvis of this bow holding photo model is also towards front, which is wrong, as said already.