Myranda from Game of Thrones

This is Myranda from Game of Thrones. Good series, was better when it was still based on the books, now everything happens too quickly, characters teleport from the other corner of the world to another in the change of the scene and people get resqued from seemingly certain death in the last second.

Anyway, Myranda here thinks you should look in the line of the arrow you are shooting. No, you don't need to do it. You shouldn't do it. Hold your arrow on the cheek, not in the line of the eye. Sometimes arrows are shot even lower, from shoulder level, especially in Eastern archery. So having the arrow line with your eye is not necessary, it can even be detrimental if you learn how to shoot like this. Since you have to learn how to not shoot like this afterwards. There's no benefits in holding an arrow this high, it just messes up your concentration when you think you should use the arrow as a guide. You shouldn't, you should just know where the arrow is pointing and where it will fly. You will learn this with a little bit of practice. Practice that the actress of Myranda sadly hadn't had time or resources to have.
She also bends her torso backwards which is not a stance you want to have.
Also could be that she doesn't use her back muscles to do the draw, instead pulling the string with only her arms strength.
And the ubiquitous back quiver is of course present.

Keep your bow arm straight!

I have something to say about this photo, which is photographically quite decent (although strange place to focus, instead of the face or the arrow tip for example).

The form of the bow arm is not good on her. It goes like a zig-zag. It should ba as straight as possible. Simple as that. The wrist and elbow are now bent inwards, which results in the forearm being too close to the bowstring. That's why beginners need those bracers on the inside of their bowarm, since they bend their wrist and elbow in a way that exposes the inside of the forearm to the moving string. That's bad technique, and won't be corrected by using a bracer. Instead I embrace not using a bracer and soon an archer learns not to bend the forearm in the way of the string. Pain teaches.

There is very little amount of historical archer's bracers found. If everybody would have used them, there should be way more. Also they are depicted very scarcely on period artwork. They were sometimes used, but weren't widespread by any means. Since most archers knew how to shoot without hitting their forearm with every release.

Gothic Jungle Book Pocahontas

This picture is like Jungle Book meets Pocahontas in a gothic setting. Where are all the colours (of the wind)? Bagheera here is black, and also colourless are the dead looking Grandmother Willows. The woman is just about to slip from the tree brach se is sitting(?) on. Wardrobe choices seems to to concern her, but who wouldn't want to dress in a mini skirt and a tight leather top that can "malfunction" at any time, while presumably going to a hunt in the forest and climbing trees? There is also a very specific little wind just in her black hair, and another that blows right next to it, to her hood, but in the opposite direction, must be magic!

Not very many archery mistakes in this drawing, since the woman is not shooting. When shooting, there are numerous things that can be wrong, but when just holding the bow, it is easier to get things right, since there are lesser amount of things to notice.

Still, there are mistakes:
1. The fistmele, the space between the bow and bowstring at the middle is too wide. It means the bow is weak. Nobody would use a weak bow for hunting or for war. Only children use weak bows when they start practising archery. And bows can be made weak without having a huge fistmele.
2. Quiver on the back. It would be easier to list all the times I've seen a hip quiver in modern archer drawings. Can't think of any at the moment.
3. The quiver is also on the wrong shoulder, if you would like to get arrows from there.

Medusa drawing (Harryhausen style)

This drawing is copied from the late and great Ray Harryhausen's Medusa from Clash of the Titans (the 1981 version, not the 2010 remake, which is not of course on par with the original). The Harryhausen Medusa didn't have any clothes, but the young man who has drawn this has been shy about drawing naked breasts (I know the feeling, I've been at that point myself), but he has been titillated enough to draw the nipples showing through the cloth. So what's the point of drawing the cloth in the first place then?

Anyway, to the archery mistakes:

1. This bow is asymmetrical, and not on purpose.
2. Bowstring goes over the arm, which is of course wrong by all measurable standards.
3. Reverse grip with four fingers, instead of three.
4. Another mistake in the same circle, the string is bend significantly inside the fist.
5. This arrow is huge, almost the size of a javelin. It's just too heavy (especially with such a huge tip).
6. Index finger over the arrow, a beginners mistake.
7. Quiver on the back.
8. Arrows on the quiver are lacking the nocking space between the fletching and the end of the arrows.

Bonus:
Left-handedness, definitely not on purpose. Medusa in the film was right handed.

Three arrows shooting manga woman

It almost feels bad to rip these drawings to pieces. I know that young people have drawn these, and I have drawn my entire life myself, and I know how bad it would feel to read a critique like that. But I hope the person who has drawn this is a grown up adult now (since I think this is a pretty old picture), and can handle the critique. Since the critique I present in this blog is never aimed towards a person behind a drawing, and usually not even at the artistic quality (or the lack thereof) of the drawing, but usually only towards how archery is depicted in that particular drawing. Since that is the point of this blog. To correct all the archery related mistakes in popular culture. And even when the work to be done is monumental in nature, it won't stop me trying to fix things.

So, mistakes in this drawing are:
1. What is this bow made of? Surely not of wood, since this contruction with spikes and sholes wouldn't last a second in real life. It also looks very ugly.
2. The bow tapers to a series of spikes in the end, and wouldn't be durable enough for use. The string is also not attached to anything.
3. Three arrows shot at once. This is not how it could be done. All those arrows are pointing in different directions, and even though the middle arrow might be possible to be shot, the other arrows interfere with the shooting significantly. It's also a waste of arrows. The arrowtips are also horrible. The thumb of the bow hand is on the wrong side of the middle arrow.
4. All the arrows nock to the exact same point on the bowstring, which is impossible. They also lack fetching altogether. And all the arrows are held between the middle and ring finger of the archer, that is one finger too low.
5. Four fingered grip, a beginners mistake. The bowstring is deep inside the fist, which is impossible in real life.
6. One of the most significant mistakes in this picture is that the string is way too short for this bow. This bow cannot shoot arrows at all. The string is pulled back maybe five centimeters, which isn't nearly enough to fly those arrows anywhere. The bow is drawn way too curved, that's why there hasn't been room for the string to pull back more.
7. Quiver on the back. This simply wasn't done.
8. The quiver on the back that simply wasn't done is also hugely too long. It is completely impossible to take arrows from a back quiver which is that long and sits that high on the back. Your arm just can't reach to take the arrows out of it.
9. Now the arrows on the quiver (which are also longer than the arrows being shot) do have fletching on them, but the fletchings are fuzzy and there isn't any space for fingers to grip the arrow at the nock. The nocks can't even be seen under all the fuzz.
10. The character isn't even looking anywhere near the direction she's supposedly shooting.

Bonus:
She's left handed, most probably due to a poor understanding of archery, and not on purpose.

Theater production in Finland with bad archery

Today I saw on the side of a bus an advertisement for a Finnish theater production, called Talvisirkus Rakkaus ("Winter circus Love"), and on it was a picture of a woman shooting with a bow. Or rather pretending to be shooting with a bow.

It is frustrating to see all the time archery is depicted, that it is depicted wrongly. Apparently no one in the production knew how to shoot and no one bothered to ask about someone who would have known. I remember reading that earlier (early in the last century and before) actors were trained in all kinds of physical activities, including riding a horse, swordfighting and archery. But of course everything was better before.

Mistakes:
1. In picture A a womanis holding the bowstring with three fingers, but not holding the arrow at all. The arrow should of course be nocked between index and middle fingers, when shooting with the Mediterranean style. If the arrow is not controlled by the string hand, it will fly whereever, if it will even keep on the string while being released.

2. In picture B (which is taken from a gif) is probably the worst "grip" of the bowstring I've ever seen. The same woman is holding the string with the tip of her index finger. It is not possible to shoot like this, since she won't have enough strength to pull that string (even though the bow seems quite powerless).

3. In picture C (behind the scenes material) the director of the play is demonstrating (!) how to shoot with a bow. This is sad to hear, since she is neither holding her arrow between the index and middle fingers of her string hand, instead the arrow is just placed on the top of the string hand. This is not right, and you should not demonstrate how to shoot, if you don't yourself know how to do it.

For the next time, please ask someone who actually practices archery (there are lots of clubs all over Finland) how to do it. It's not that hard.

Quivers on hips, not on back

There have been debate after Lars Andersen's excellent archery video, and it's sequel, about if back quivers were used in history.

I received a comment telling me that some unnamed experts had provided Andersen's with pictographical evidence of back quivers used in Medieval Europe. Andersen himself showed in his video some pictures of quivers hanging at the hip belt of archers, and he does not deny the existence of back quivers altogether.

But I have never seen a proof of medieval or modern period European archers using back quivers. In the manner of proper scientific method I am always open for corrections, so I ask you to provide me a medieval, or modern period (or whatever period), picture, drawing, painting, fresco, graffito, relief, statue, miniature, mosaic, glass painting, etc. pictographical evidence of European (or from anywhere) archer or crossbowman using a back quiver.

So...

WANTED: A historical illustration of archer wearing a quiver on his back.

In the meantime, I will provide my own evidence. I tried to find any image of back quivers, but mostly couldn't find any. Here are a collection of pictures I found of archers and crossbowmen, and almost all of them are using hip quivers. Some had tuck their arrows inside their belts, some carried them by hand and some didn't have spare arrows at all (artists mistake?), but not much back quivers.

There are one dubious example of a back quiver I could find. It's on the famous Bayeux tapestry, which tells the story of William the Conqueror conquering England roughly one thousand years ago. The picture is not of highest quality, because of it's age and the method of making. Anatomy, perspective and several other things are incorrect in this tapestry, so I don't know if this counts as firm proof. And the belt/baldric of that one quiver is depicted wrong, I am not sure if they have tried to depict a back quiver or a hip quiver, since the quiver is at shoulder level, but the belt looks like a hip belt and not like a shoulder baldric. Even if that would be a proper back quiver, it is only one picture, the only one I've seen so far. All the three other bowmen in that same scene of the Bayeux tapestry have ordinary hip quivers.

I will show the Bayeux tapestry example last. First, pictures of archers with hip quivers:





From medieval Roman 'Alexander manuscript'.









Death of Saint Edmund, the King of Essex.


Depiction of Burgundian archers in the battle of Grandson (1476) in Lucerne Chronicle.


Mythical man-animal creature.








Shooting of St. Sebastian.


Archer Drawing a Bow by Pietro Vannucci Perugino.


Looks like Leonardo DaVinci's style to me.


Asiatic horse archer.



Horse archer.






Shooting of St. Sebastian, once more.



Early modern period Hungarian.


Knight on horseback with a bow.


Polish king Jagiello, 1418.


Some pictures from Islamic books too.


And horse archers.



And now the Bayeux tapestry picture, which has three archers with hip quivers and one with something which looks like a hip quiver but not worn properly:



Since this post is quite long already, I will continue with pictures of bowmen without a quiver in the next post, later.

So far: 39 different pictures with hip quivers, only one which may be a back quiver.