I didn’t get started until it was a bit late tonight and it took me quite a while to even get to this point.  As my wife Jenny was going off to bed she did a couple of kung fu kick poses for me and I roughly drew it out.  Ultimately, I had a lot of trouble getting the proportions to look correct so I decided to erase it and I start from scratch with a simpler position.

I started with the torso and worked my way out from there.  I wanted to have the hips pushing in the opposite direction of the ribcage which, as I look at it now, isn’t really happening exactly.  It’s almost as if her upper torso is in a 3/4 position while her hips are straight on.  I could see that her hips were not wide enough but after I drew her hands in with more detail I didn’t want to have to erase and re-draw them.  I re-drew the legs quite a bit, trying one leg in front of the other.  Eventually, I felt this leg position seemed to complement the angle of the hips the best.

I have very little experience drawing women, even just the female face.  Usually, as a kid, when I’d attempt to draw a female face, she’d end up looking like one of my male characters except with long eyelashes and big lips.  I did finally come to be able to draw a certain style of female face with some success but I left it at that and never took it anywhere.