Maybe I should have the sword going horizontally rather than diagonally. In the thumbnail, it just doesn't look right with the current orientation of his hand, and it looks kind of limp since I drew the wrist kind of leaning downwards. I initially started drawing it so that he was leaning on his sword, but I didn't like how the torso was leaning that way (wanted him leaning back instead of forward) with the weight of his big shield pulling him back. Perhaps I should have made the picture wider. My first inclination is to make him just holding the sword out with his elbow bent, but I don't think that will fit in there since I made the canvas size very tall but not so wide.

Maybe something like this could work, but I feel like a lot of weight would need to be transferred (and hence a whole lot redrawn) to make it look okay. It would need to look like he's preparing to strike someone.

Perhaps I can find another solution that doesn't require redrawing half the figure just to fix the arm. Perhaps he could just be leaning the sword on his right shoulder instead of swinging it across his left one. It just seems really hard to draw an arm in that pose to me. Perhaps I can have him just kind of holding the sword down with it pointing across his torso in a 45 degree angle with his arm sort of lowered and relax (just a ready sort of pose instead of a striking pose).

Seems like I've run into the same sort of problem with this one as I did in the last one. Doh. I seem to trap myself like this with feet and arms even when drawing without references. Maybe I should start drawing figures by starting with the arms first and then make the rest of the figure work around that. Generally I start either with the head or the feet.

This is a nightmare. I think I need to start over.

Trying basically what I proposed in v2 to see what happens. I definitely need to practice anatomy more before I can pull this kind of thing off comfortably without references. I tend to just draw poses that are convenient and easy to draw without a lot of foreshortening or anything in such cases, but I can't get any convenient arm poses that are easy for me to draw to work in this picture (most just wouldn't fit in the narrow canvas size I made here). I'm not good enough at anatomy to draw the harder arm poses convincingly. I especially have trouble around the shoulders.

Maybe I should buy a printer, print this, and work out the problems on paper. Seems like it would be a lot easier.

I think the first two versions work best in terms of balance, but just don't look good as poses. This last one probably looks the best as a pose if it looked perfectly okay, but it kind of loses its balance since the elbow is jutting out and with the way his weight is shifted, it looks kind of odd (at least to me in the thumbnail). I really don't want to redraw the lower half of his body if I can help it, since I feel I got somewhat lucky there.

HunterKiller: the straight lines on the right leg are indicating where the boots might be placed if I go with boots instead of sandals. I think I'm going to go with sandals, but I started off wanting to do boots (since I generally have trouble with feet). The one on the waist is just something I started out with before drawing the waist to indicate how the front plane of his pelvis is tilting with respect to that straight line across the shoulder. I tried to do get like a contrapposto thing going for a sense of balance. And then the pair of straight lines across his abdomen are just a reminder of how the front and side planes of his torso are arranged in perspective.

I felt I could restore some sense of balance in the figure by making the sword longer and giving him some more bulk in the left area (with the pauldron). I also doodled in some details.

Committing to the previous pose and doing some basic refinement. It sort of looks like a marker sketch at this stage.

I still need to work on the shield and other details. The shield is killing me - I can't freehand ellipses in perspective with my tablet at all.

Ended up simplifying the shield shape with a perfect ellipse made with the ellipse tool and added some basic details.

Added some extremely basic color. I want to keep the more graphic quality to it. Guess I'll call it finished now.

Missed a spot.

Cloxboy: Thanks very much - it took me ages to find a pose that didn't completely fall apart. It'd be a dream to do a collaboration with you, but I'm scared that I won't be able to keep up with your skill level. I also have almost zero experience when it comes to doing collaborations, but if you are willing to humor me, I'd love to give it a shot.

Zack: Thanks - unfortunately I kind of went past the stage where I could easily make changes after v6. How about if I put in a quick ground plane like this, just to make it feel like his feet are at least planted on the ground rather than floating in space? Maybe that would at least compensate somewhat for the way his left leg looks longer by giving it some sense of perspective.

Oops, left a stray line in the last revision.