In today's cliffhanging page, this Deathmonger pose neatly displays the compositional issue behind many comic artists' alleged avoidance of drawing feet, especially on the cramped available space of cover illustrations. See, the moment that an artist decides to draw a "full-figure shot" like this rather than a cropped view of said figure that cuts off at, say, mid-thigh, you're immediately forced to draw a much smaller figure than you might like, as you need to keep those precious, precious feet well clear of the bottom of the page. In fact, Deathmonger's left boot is getting a little closer to that bottom edge than I would be comfortable with on a cover image, as often variable final printing might drift the "trim line" (where the art cuts off) even closer to them toesies.

And if this image were actually the basis for a cover illo, I'd have to shrink the full-figure Deathmonger image down much further, as the all-important Empowered logo would be taking up the top quarter or third of the page, and I'd like wanna keep ol' DM's head well below it. With most standing poses, a full-figure shot almost automatically means a smaller figure shot; that's why I often crop the figure at mid-thigh on many of my covers and almost all of my con sketches, as I'm looking to increase the figure's graphic impact by taking up as much of the available space on the page as possible.

So, no, snarky commenters, this supposed tendency has nothing to do with avoiding the drawing of feet per se, at least as far as this particular comics artist is concerned. (Though, come to think of it, I do have another specific reason to obscure feet that occurs on occasion in this series, as I sometimes deviously deploy that covering-up to hide the "ground plane" and camouflage a problematic issue in my perspective drawing—but that would need to be addressed in another technically oriented commentary down the road.)

Today’s Patreon update: In an attempt to scratch out more worktime to complete the long-gestating Empowered vol. 12, I've switched over to a Monday/ Wednesday/ Friday Patreon posting schedule that won't feature the fixed content format I previously used. So, who knows what today's post might feature? Could be Life Drawing or Distressed Damsels content (both of which are featured at least three times per month), or something in the Work Stages, Vintage Con Sketches or Design departments, or possibly something entirely new. Golly!

-Adam Warren