Action Pose Drawing: Tangents, Depth, and Anatomy

Drawing a dynamic action pose requires more than accurate anatomy. The figure, clothing, weapon, and overlapping shapes all need to work together spatially. In this Artwod feedback example, @joseph22665 asked for help with perspective, form and depth, values, light and color, anatomy, and line quality. The feedback focused especially on tangents and clearer structural relationships.

Insights shared in this blog post are by: @gabrielle34427. You can also request feedback on your artwork in Artwod’s Art Community.

The artist, @joseph22665, listed several areas they were struggling with.  

The artwork shows a white-haired anime character in a crouched, action-oriented pose, holding a large sword diagonally across the composition. The character has layered clothing, boots, armor-like details, and several overlapping shapes. Not an easy task!

The feedback from @pifalo (don't miss on his feedbacks guys, super helpful!) identified tangents as the main issue and included a quick sketch demonstrating possible corrections. 

A tangent happens when two shapes touch or nearly touch in a visually confusing way.

Instead of clearly separating one object from another, their edges merge or create an ambiguous connection. This is particularly noticeable in complex drawings because there may be: 

• Weapons crossing limbs

• Hair overlapping clothing

• Armor touching legs

• Hands connecting to weapons

• Multiple clothing layers meeting at the same point

In the paintover, several areas are circled where these relationships become difficult to read.

A tangent is a line that is touching or that comes close to another line but does not intersect. They disrupt clarity of the silhouette, making your art confusing to your audience.

One of the simplest ways to find tangent problems is to temporarily ignore the interior details and look only at the outer silhouette. 

Ask: Can I immediately tell where one major form ends and another begins? 

For this artwork, this is especially useful around the sword, shoulder, legs, and boots.

Try a simplified silhouette pass:

1. Fill the entire character with one value.

2. Ignore internal lines and decorative details.

3. Look at where major shapes touch.

4. Separate confusing overlaps.

5. Reintroduce details only after the silhouette reads clearly.

This prevents rendering from hiding structural problems. A good practice is to check for tangents after you’ve completed your lineart, as it's easiest to fix here. A tip I used to avoid this is try and use overlap, as opposed to two semi touching objects.

The sword is one of the strongest compositional elements in the drawing.

Because it runs diagonally across the character, small placement changes can significantly affect the pose.

The paintover suggests lifting the sword slightly.

This type of adjustment can help separate the weapon from nearby anatomical and clothing shapes, reducing tangents and making the action clearer.

When drawing a weapon in an action pose, treat it as part of the overall gesture rather than an object added afterward.

Try drawing the character's action line first, then place the weapon along a complementary direction. 

Due to swords essentially being long lines, I think they can easily lend to making an interesting composition and pose. Aside from this feedback submission, there are other examples of this.

In this next community submission, the paintover creates clarity for both of the poses by adjusting the weapon position. Moving the women’s weapon to be pointed up breaks up the composition and makes each pose unique. With this adjustment, it makes a nice “Z” visual arrangement which is a common trick to lead the audience's eyes across the whole piece.

This feedback example demonstrates (once again!) that complex artwork can benefit from temporarily becoming much simpler.

When a drawing contains detailed clothing, weapons, hair, and anatomy, it is easy to focus on individual parts. But problems with tangents, overlaps, and construction can affect the entire image. Reducing the character to simple forms makes those problems much easier to identify. 

Tangents occur when two shapes touch or overlap in a visually confusing way, making their relationship difficult to understand.

Check the silhouette and major overlaps first. Separate shapes that merge ambiguously before adding more detail.

Yes. Establish the underlying body structure first, then build clothing and armor around it. It’s difficult to draw clothes over forms that have not been established. If you have trouble with figure drawings, our figure road is waiting for you (you can try for free!)

Strengthen the gesture, torso lean, limb angles, weight distribution, and directional movement of major objects such as weapons. Using art tricks such as line of action can aid in making a strong gesture. Check out our free Action Poses Workout and start practicing now!

Use clear overlaps, perspective, simplified construction forms, silhouette checks, and value differences to establish which forms sit in front of others.

No. Resolve gesture, construction, anatomy, and major overlaps first. Rendering should reinforce the structure rather than hide problems within it. Anatomy issues are far easier to fix earlier on in the process.

If you are working on a complex anime pose, focused feedback can help identify structural problems that become difficult to see once the drawing contains heavy linework, clothing, weapons, and rendering. The Artwod community helps connect you with other artists who can give you feedback on artwork you share focusing on helping you learn.  If you want to get feedback of your own, post your art in the anime category.