#imaginescalemates

@imaginescalemates: Thank you so so much for your help in advance! Ignore the wings and tail - those are really rough placeholders lol. This is a dragonborn-type character, so she has claws (pointy fingers lol) and dragon feet - other than that she has human anatomy, so I’d really love some help with that (and if you could help with the hands, which are pretty much human hands, and even the feet too, that’d be amazing). I can’t wait to see what you have to say!

Hey there fellow traditional artist! What a cool character you’ve got going on here–I love dragon-y aesthetics! Let’s dive in.

Posing

Contrapposto (the way we lean on one leg, with the shoulders and pelvis/hips twisted off-axis) is a classical art pose that can produce fun, natural poses. Good on you for recognizing that!

I tilted the hip and shoulder on our left more towards each other, while the right hip/shoulder are further away.

You may notice that I shifted the character’s head/neck to the left. Now, their whole body (head/neck included) follows the line of action, which is all about the direction the body is moving in. More specifically, where the weight is being supported.

In this case, the left hip is holding the weight, so it all goes towards that hip.

I usually use the spine to determine my line of action.

I’ve also turned the body towards the right a little bit, to make it more 3D. If you look at the blue ribcage I constructed, it almost looks like a see-through egg.

If you think of it as a person in real space, it’s like I’m pushing the character backwards just a tiny bit.

I also changed the tilt of the feet. I physically recreated the pose myself, and having both feet turned inward didn’t feel quite right. We tend to naturally stand with our feet tilted outward, so that’s what I highlighted above.

Proportion

Your proportion is already pretty accurate! Everything is just about the correct length/in the right place. Nice job.

I did elongate the calves and made room for the ankles. 

I also lowered the shoulders to give your character room for their neck. High shoulders can make figures appear more rigid or stressed.

Here’s a trick to check if your arms are the correct length: measure the length of one half of the arm. That same length should be equal to the distance from the tip of the shoulder to the bottom of the ribcage. Then, make sure it’s the same length as the other half of the arm. The tip of the middle finger should come to mid-thigh.

Hands!

Note how the fingers come toward the viewer, so some of the back of the hand doesn’t show. They curve, so the knuckles ‘pop out.’

Experiment with constructing each finger as mini cylinders strung together. This simulates drawing the skeleton underneath!

Also, for the claws, I would do them like you did the toes in the original (as if they’re long nails). It comes off a bit better than pointy fingers. 

Hopefully this all makes sense! If you want to continue to understand human anatomy, I would suggest drawing and learning from skeleton reference images. Another great way to learn fluid, natural posing is to draw people! I personally enjoy sitting in public and drawing my friends or just people around me. You can learn a heck of a lot! 

CUTE!!!

Thank you so much! : ) We hope to see you in our inbox once we open submissions back up

obligatory extra^ This was so much fun!

Aardek [Jadeblood] belongs to @imploder