I’m an archer.
I haven’t been shooting for very long—just a year or so. I’m friends with archers, I’ve studied how professional archers shoot, and I know the differences between different bows and different draw styles and lots of other little nitpicky things.
But is it nitpicking? Is it really? Before you hound on me for being too detail oriented, stop and think about that thing that you’re passionate about. Yeah, that thing. That thing that you love to do or watch or draw or read. Now imagine that someone got that thing, that entire thing, so grossly inaccurate that you damn near gagged. And then they had the gall to tell you that you were the one in the wrong!
So if you don’t want to learn about how simple it is to find proper archery references, carry on. If you want to pass this along, or save it for reference yourself, you are welcome to keep reading.
Let’s start with the original image, here:
So. #1.
- First of all, the draw is wrong. You don’t draw with two fingers, you draw with three. There are multiple kinds of draw styles:
And you can clearly see that he was attempting to draw the Mediterranean three-finger draw, but simply decided against it for whatever reason. There simply isn’t enough strength with just two fingers to pull back a really weighted bowstring. Maybe you can manage to hold a 20 pound draw with two fingers, but anything above that? You’re screwed. Furthermore, the draw hand needs support. It is holding the weight of the entire bow. If you hold your hand away from your face, it will start shaking like a leaf with exhaustion within no time at all. When drawing a bow, you use your back and shoulder muscles. If you had to depend solely on your forearm muscles to shoot, the arrow wouldn’t go very far and you’d get tired very quickly. Therefore, you need to rest your hand against your face, and use your cheek as an anchor point. When you release the string, your hand stays against your face. That way the arrow flies straight and true. Here are a couple reference images that I got from an excellent stock galleryon deviantArt in order to illustrate my point.
Would you look at that! No matter what picture, their hands are all anchored somewhere on their face. It’s a little bit different for everyone. Personally, I draw so that my thumb is under my jaw and my pointer finger is at the edge of my lip.
- Number two! This one is simple. If you look at the same images above, you will see: The arrow rests on the knuckles of the hand holding the bow, not the thumb. The knuckles. Or, if the bow has an arrow rest (which, newsflash, all modern recurves and compound bows have), it rests on the arrow rest. Which the artist actually drew but just didn’t put a thought into why it was bloody there. So yes, arrow is on the wrong side of the bow, as well as not resting on either the knuckles or the arrow rest. Which is just downright silly.
- What the fuck is this stance? You can’t shoot like this! You just. You just can’t. I’m going to have you try something. Put your left arm all the way out in front of you, as though you were holding a bow. Now pull your right hand back and anchor it against your face, your elbow up high, but don’t turn your torso at all. That’s right, face forward entirely. It’s so fucking awkward and damn near impossible. In archery, you always face the target with your face and bow and everything, but your hips are facing 90 degrees to the right (or left, depending on which side you shoot on). Your hips should be facing entirely that way, with your torso twisted only slightly towards the target. Again, reference images so that you know what I’m talking about!
- You may notice I’m using a lot of pictures of lady archers. This is an effort to also show how WELL HEY NOT EVERY SINGLE FEMALE ARCHER HAS THE SAME BODY SHAPE/BODY TYPE. Because fuck that.
- Number four! The bow itself! It’s trying so very hard to be a recurve, but is masquerading as a compound bow. So there are a lot, a lot, of different kinds of bows, but for my purposes right now I will only talk about recurves and compound bows. By typing in “recurve” in google images, I immediately got these two super helpful pictures!
As you can see, they illustrate the differences between recurves (first picture) and compounds (second picture) very well! Clearly the artist was going for a compound, but compounds very, very rarely have that huge curve in their limbs. Sometimes there is a slight curve, but as the pulleys do all the work there is no need for the bow itself to curve. Recurves curve because as you pull further back, the bow straightens out and gives the archer a bigger mechanical advantage and more weight to the draw and just generally awesome things that longbows aren’t as good at. So yeah, get the bow right. - Aaaaaand finally, number five. Equipment! The archers are clearly seen wearing arm guards, but no shooting glove! What the hell! Shooting gloves, or shooting tabs, are used to aid the archer, because that much pressure driven into your fingers by a thin string hurts like a bitch. The leather in between the string and fingers gives you a better grip and helps your accuracy.
There it is! My very, very long rant about archery!
It’s not that hard to google things, guys. Not hard at all. P.S. the original artist of the picture I got irked at is Goni Montes. The other images are either from the stock gallery I linked to, or google images.
Well I think I drew Finn completely wrong.