elaboration here (http://littlefroggies.tumblr.com/post/28706407694/i-drew-this-super-super-fast-sorry-its-so) and here (http://littlefroggies.tumblr.com/post/28719210199/people-are-sending-me-a-lot-of-messages-that-are) because I don’t think people get what I mean by “under” boobs

Okay, took a short 10 minute break to doodle this. Trying to illustrate something that a lot of artists do, intentionally or unintentionally, when drawing kinda-busty to very-busty people. I’m no expert but I figured I’d just try.

1 - arms crossed without boobs as obstacle
2 & 3 - popular ways of drawing busty people unrealistically crossing arms
4 - a more natural and realistic way of crossing arms
Bonus - something a lot of inexperienced artists do to try to work around all obstacles at once, but end up drawing strangely long arms and torsos in the process.

Lots of WORDS below…So, you’re reading a comic with, for the sake having an example, a busty lady in an office. Because she’s bored, or because she’s serious, or because she’s mad, for whatever the reason, she crosses her arms. Alarmingly, in most cases she folds her arms under her breasts, which doesn’t make any sense, and comes down to one or both of two reasons:

• The artist isn’t good at anatomy and just didn’t know better
• The priority was making sure she looked “hot” and that her breasts were still on display no matter her pose

Addressing the anatomy problem:

Pantomime crossing your arms right now. It’s a very simple movement — move both arms forward slightly, cross them over your chest, hook hands over/under elbows and/or between upper arms and chest, and you’re comfortably sort of “locked” into that pose.

Now, using my drawings as an illustration, for a bust person to do this, they wouldn’t do that natural simple movement. They would have to lower their arms slightly, use their lower arms press against their abs and slide up under their boobs to push them up to rest underneath them, then try to somehow hook their hands under/over their elbows while sandwiched between boobs and abs/stomach. Even if you only cross hands at the wrist, your hands are still under your boobs. This is especially hard when not wearing a bra, and only a smidge more managable when wearing a very sturdy one that lifts you up high (and not all people like/enjoy/wear bras in that style)

From personal experience I can’ illustrate in a doodle, this becomes a very uncomfortable position. Citing myself as a busty girl… trying to interlock arms crossed under breasts puts a lot of strain on my wrists and/or pressure on the place where my lower arms cross.

So a quick, simple gesture just became forced and awkward. What is more natural would be something similar to (4) — just crossing your arms OVER your chest, which includes your breasts, and resting them in front or on top of (depending on size) the breasts.

If this was a mistake, well hey! Everyone makes mistakes and needs to practice and draw from life. But if this was intentional…

Addressing the sexy-pose problem:

What’s happened in this situation is that the artist found it important that the person’s breasts be seen and prominent. This happens very often in scenes that aren’t even sexy, where maybe characters are arguing in an office or exchanging humorous dialogue. But for the artist, it’s still important you can see the person’s body. including waist, hips and curves… which is frankly ridiculous.

Of course this kind of artist doesn’t like drawing figure (4) — the arms obscure the boobs and squish them flatter, and both the arms and breasts obscure more of the person’s waistline. Heaven forbid you can’t see their boobs and waist! How will you know they’re there at all … except for every other panel/scene where their arms are placed differently… oh yeah.

Snark aside: This is silly. There are so many poses that accentuate the breasts/waist/hips and are completely natural… problem is? They usually have to be intentional or purposeful for the person striking the pose… but what most artist want is INCIDENTAL sexiness. They want, for example, a sexy female character who is visually sending sexual cues to the audience to be attractive but without making that a part of the story or character — it’s lazy and cheap and exploitative.

Wanna make a comic with, for example, a sexy lady? Well make her aware of her own sexiness, make it something that’s a priority to her or give her legitimate motivations and story elements, like actually trying to seduce/appeal to someone else or intentionally show off for a purpose. There are plenty of poses that make a accentuate a busty person’s breasts, like this one I doodled really quickly (sorry it’s sloppy):

Problem is, that involves effort and writing and to pull it off you’d have to also make her a three-dimensional character and goodness knows… how about instead we take a fully developed female character we already had, and just exploit her body visually to touch all our bases! There! Didn’t even have to try!

There’s a lot of snark and sarcasm in this I realize, I apologize. I suppose this is something that irritates me a lot, as person who’s very busty, as a person who reads a lot of comics, and as someone who is attracted people of multiple genders including but not limited to busty ladies and therefore both enjoys sexy illustrations of busty people and drawing sexy busty people… this kind of thing bothers me a lot. I don’t like ignoring what makes female-identified/bodied people beautiful for cheap gimmicks trickery.