What's wrong with this.

[glisean]

I decided the other day that now that I have more free time I should try to improve my art skills - especially on certain things I never draw like the body from different perspectives and backgrounds (;-;)

So this is my attempt at sort of a fish-eye...top down pose.




where did it go wrong - why is this so awkward. I tried to use foreshortening and making it smaller lower on her body but I clearly failed...

[heyguy]

It would definitely help having reference for an angle like this. I'd say it's hard to draw something so foreshortened without lots of practice! I guess this is practice though. If you can take a picture of a friend or have someone take a pic of you, do it! Finding reference online would help too.

I think anatomically, your lady has very broad shoulders. Another problem is the position of the head, unless she was looking upwards, you wouldn't see her face as clearly/flatly. Drawing her looking upward accurately could get tough!

I tried to make an edit but I'm not entirely happy with it. It's a tough angle to get right! I'm sure another artist will edit something nicer! Anyway, drawing a figure (or something else) in this angle is often called 3 point perspective. It might help googling it and seeing other examples.



Also, here are some pics I found that have a foreshortened angles similar to yours I thought were cool and could help.

https://pre00.deviantart.net/425e/th/pre/i/2015/365/c/0/extreme_top_down_bird_s_eye_perspective_by_senshistock-d9m2njf.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/ea/68/c7/ea68c75d944a021fdb57fe6d8ffe7d32.jpg
https://imgs.steps.dragoart.com/how-to-draw-female-figures-draw-female-bodies-step-7_1_000000104031_5.png

[eishiya]

I think the main problem is that her legs aren't as foreshortened as her torso, so she appears to be leaning forward a bit, but her feet are in front of her centre of weight, so she looks off-balance.

Since her torso is foreshortened, we should see her butt higher, since it's behind her.
Her right (viewer's left) arm looks rather separated from her torso.
From above, the shoulders don't appear to slope like they do from the front, since we're seeing the tops of them, which slope into the back.

I tried to do a sketch-over, but I don't think a did a good job.

With foreshortening, I feel it's really important to start with some construction, and build up the pose on top of that, rather than the reverse as I tried to do. Figure out where feet, head, and pelvis/butt are in relation to each other, that basically sets up the rest of your pose. Then, connect them.

[glisean]

Wow this looks much closer to what I was trying to capture! I guess I got too caught up in trying to draw everything and didn't think about the individual parts in relation to each other enough. I knew what I wanted it to look like in my head but I couldn't figure out why it wasn't coming out that way.

[glisean]

It would definitely help having reference for an angle like this. I'd say it's hard to draw something so foreshortened without lots of practice! I guess this is practice though. If you can take a picture of a friend or have someone take a pic of you, do it! Finding reference online would help too.

I think anatomically, your lady has very broad shoulders. Another problem is the position of the head, unless she was looking upwards, you wouldn't see her face as clearly/flatly. Drawing her looking upward accurately could get tough!

I tried to make an edit but I'm not entirely happy with it. It's a tough angle to get right! I'm sure another artist will edit something nicer! Anyway, drawing a figure (or something else) in this angle is often called 3 point perspective. It might help googling it and seeing other examples.



Also, here are some pics I found that have a foreshortened angles similar to yours I thought were cool and could help.

https://pre00.deviantart.net/425e/th/pre/i/2015/365/c/0/extreme_top_down_bird_s_eye_perspective_by_senshistock-d9m2njf.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/ea/68/c7/ea68c75d944a021fdb57fe6d8ffe7d32.jpg
https://imgs.steps.dragoart.com/how-to-draw-female-figures-draw-female-bodies-step-7_1_000000104031_5.png

I had such a hard time finding the reference for this pose! I didn't know how to describe it other than top down, and whenever I searched that all I would get were directly pointed down from above which is not really showing a majority of the body. And I wanted her to be looking up at the camera but the body looks a lot closer to the perspective I was trying to capture!