Lying Back ArchPose Reference
Camera angles
Lying Back Arch: knees bent, feet flat by the hips, the chest lifted off the floor and the head tipped back onto its crown, arms wide overhead.
Tags: lyingon backback archarms overheadknees up
How to draw the Lying Back Arch pose
three-quarter view 
side view 
back view 
high-angle view
The figure has four kinds of contact: the soles near the hips, the pelvis, the arms, and the top of the head. Between head and pelvis the spine bows upward, so the mid back leaves the ground and the breastbone becomes the highest point of the torso. The neck extends and the head rolls back until the crown, not the back of the skull, meets the floor, with the chin pointing toward the ceiling. The knees stand up about hip-width apart, shins nearly vertical. Both arms sweep overhead along the floor into a wide V, palms up, which pulls the ribcage open and adds to the lift.
Start from the left-side profile, the only angle that shows the arch as a clear bridge between pelvis and crown with a slice of light under the mid back. From the front, looking up from the feet, the two shins rise like posts and almost hide the chest, so you mainly read the arm V framing them. The back view, from beyond the head, foreshortens the face upside down between the shoulders. The high angle gives the cleanest plan of the arms and knees but flattens the arch completely, so do not judge the curve from it.
More on angles and common mistakes
Do not push the hips off the floor; this is not a bridge, and the pelvis stays down while the chest does the lifting. Equally, avoid drawing the head flat on its back, which kills the arch, or jamming it so far back that the neck looks broken. The feet stay close to the hips with the heels down. If the knees splay outward, the pose starts to look like a stretch for the inner thighs instead of the spine.
This lying back arch pose suits yoga and dance studies, a character waking with a full-body stretch, or a dreamy figure drawn from above on imagined grass. The floor is not shown. Edit this pose by lowering both knees together to one side; the spine gains a twist on top of the arch, a useful variant for gentle movement sequences.
Free to use (CC0). The pose images on this page are released under CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication). Use them for drawing practice, commercial illustration, reference sheets or AI image generation; no attribution is required. A credit to PoseMaker is appreciated but optional.
Lying Back Arch pose prompt
Copy a prompt for your AI image generator. Pair it with the OpenPose skeleton in ControlNet so the generated character matches this exact pose.
General prompt
A person lying on their back on the floor with both knees bent hip-width apart and feet flat near the hips, chest lifted into an arch so the mid back leaves the floor, head tipped back with the crown on the floor, arms stretched overhead in a wide V with palms up, plain background.
Midjourney
full body person lying on back, knees bent with feet flat near the hips, chest lifted into a back arch, head tipped back onto the crown, arms spread wide overhead on the floor, palms up, graceful stretch, side view, plain background --ar 3:2 --style raw
Stable Diffusion
1person, full body, lying, on back, on floor, back arch, arched back, chest up, head back, knees up, bent knees, feet flat on floor, arms overhead, arms spread, palms up, stretching, side view, simple background
Negative prompt
hips lifted, bridge pose, flat back, head flat on floor, broken neck, legs straight, knees splayed outward, arms at sides, sitting up, floating, extra limbs, malformed hands, bad anatomy, cropped feet, blurry
OpenPose skeleton for ControlNet
Load the PNG into a ControlNet OpenPose unit (preprocessor: none), or import the JSON into an OpenPose editor.
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