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Daandric β Tutorial most basic archery
Published: 2010-01-26 22:57:16 +0000 UTC; Views: 6226; Favourites: 119; Downloads: 78
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Description
the MOST common MISTAKE that people make while drawing archers is LOWERED ELBOW!Every type of archery has RAISED elbow because when you try to draw a bow with lowered elbow, you draw it with your arm muscles, but when you raise your elbow it forces you to draw your bow with your BACK muscles which makes the drawing more easy and wider.
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Upper part:
In sport archery or european archery ( up left ) anchor* is on the chin.
* Anchor is the place where you have locked you arrow to and where are you all ready to fire.
In kyudo ( Japaneese archery [link] | down left) you raise your arm high so it allmost looks like a bow itself. Anchor is behind ears. Some bad kyudo archer are registered to have slashed their own ears off with bow string when fired close to their ears.
Lowered elbow example ( right down ).
Right up - Stickman archer pose and places for arrow quivers. One on the back is robin hood style, one just above the ass is most popular at horse archers and one tied to the leg is popular at sport archery. Some people take some arrows ( 1o max ) and hold them in the same hand as the bow so they can take their arrows and draw very fast.
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Lower part:
Some different archer poses.
More explanation about archery on next page.
Part II: [link]
Related content
Comments: 34
Incorrect, japanese archery has lowered elbow. It depends on the styleof archery.Β
see Below.Β
also, research :Kyudo.Β
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Manchu archery has a lowered elbow too. They use a natural anchor which allows the elbow to drop. I would consider the high elbow in the upper left corner to be bad form. Your elbow can be a bit high, but not that high. The elbow and arrow should be in one line. It's not biomechanically sound.
Your X archer is drawing to the chest, which is a totally normal way for a medieval archer to shoot his longbow. Drawing a longbow to the ear, which is a natural draw as well, drops the elbow.
So basically all the traditional and historic archers shoot heavy bows with a straight arm and elbow, the Olympic style archers develop frozen shoulder and tennis elbow and end up shooting baby weights... Does this say enough?
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What do you mean elbow is lowered? It's up just like in the picture...?
I know kyudo, I had a chance to do it few times.
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The elbow, in kyudo, is much lower than the wrist.Β
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Yeah but it's not all the way down like slapped to the ribs.
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Oh my gah, I totally know what you are talking about, I hate it when people do that, I teach archery for real and that's a common actual mistake too.
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Good to hear that I'm not spreading lies. I was doing archery for some very short time. I later discovered there were some styles of archery deviating from these basic rules, but some still stay the same (like the elbows-up )
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According to FITA, the elbow should be in a straight line aligned with the arrow. many archers do raise their elbow a little but strictly speaking its bad form.
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nice to be of help, and yes U are correct there are certain styles of bow that are designed in such a way requiring different holding, but pro's still use the good old fashioned way
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Your tutorials are very helpful, and I'm grateful for your detailed descriptions! Β Thank you!
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I'm glad it's still useful even after 3 years
Remember that these are absolute basics. There are some styles that bend the rules, feel free to check your local archery clubs and see how people shoot there~
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T-thank you very much! Your tutorial is really simple for me to understand! ;u;
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Well it's basic~ and it should be simple to cover up basics.
I'm glad it helped!
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One of my characters wields a Bow
This is awesome and thank you for doing this
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Cool. I have 3 of them
No problem...oh and this is old. I've researched and there are tons of archery styles and all are different...the only consistent rule is that elbow goes up
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woah, i was going to draw a character holding a bow and arrow, this tutorial has been real helpful, thanks!
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this is really useful ^^
I had a feeling i was doing this wrong, I made my first archer but haven't been drawing any positions.
Thanks for posting this
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Not a problem, if you need more info, just ask and I will provide.
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This is extremely useful! I'm drawing the pose on the lower left corner, but all of the archer photos I found with google are blurred at the bow and arrow (and I mean really really blurred), so it's hard to see how they look from this angle and how far from the face they look. I don't know if you're still working on this series, but if you are can you draw what the hand holding the arrow looks like in that pose?
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ummm...part 14? [link]
Oh the pose when the archer is facing you? hmmm...you could simulate that yourself...or i could draw the sketch for you.
If you are having trouble finding that pose as a photo, try searching for same pose as gun, then the gun wielding hand as ref for arrow holding, except that only 2 ( index and middle ) or 3 ( index,middle and ring ) finger should hold it, not pinky.
Also I do archery in real life so I experimented with some shooting poses myself.
Oh i just found a good ref for you:
[link]
You could use his RIGHT hand ( the one holding black gun ) for ref.
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Thanks, that works too. I was too quick to post the comment, actually. Even if you do draw a sketch (and I wouldn't dream of asking you if you don't feel like it) I'm still pretty impatient so I'd just try to use whatever blurry reference I could find. I'll keep looking for reference pictures, and the one you sent me is drawn in a cartoonish style (so all the parts of the fingers are clearly visible) so that helps quite a lot. Thanks a lot for the advise, and the tutorial, and sorry to bother you
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Not a problem, if you wanna find refs and stuff and also tutorials you can either check my scraps ( tons of sketches and bases there ) or you can check my favs, which are full of tutorials and great artworks. and If you have time, I could draw some bases and poses directly with you ( I know some online drawing sites ).
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You have a nice style 
Besides, I changed my keywords (again) and I think I found a photo I can use for reference on the hand. Thanks again for your help, though
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I was offering help so I could draw for you to watch, you could follow on paper, It's much better and faster if I can draw directly " in front" of you, but ok :3
I'm glad i was of help and if you do find any problems regarding archery, you can ask me , I could donate tonage of refs, artworx, knowledge, videos, and thx for stopping by. :3
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Thanks, I might take up on that offer - could you maybe critique on the finished pic (once I finish it, of course) and tell me if there's anything wrong with the pose? It's mostly a headshot, so there wouldn't be much to see (plus I'm a beginner and still suck at drawing) but it's amazing how many seemingly impossible mistakes I can make...
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I make tons of mistakes too, and if you really want link me all them pictures you want to be criticized and I will speak. I always say the best, and the worst thing on ones art piece and overall opinion.
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Not a problem, if you need any specific pose not em and wil will give you sketches.
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Thank you
Tutorial or archer bases?
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Both! Archery poses are hard for many. Until I start using a bow I never knew how details of placement of the fingers and so-forth. I hope more people view your tutorial here.
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I hope more people view this too
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