Lying, Arms OverheadPose Reference
Camera angles
Lying on back arms overhead pose: flat on the floor, legs straight and together, elbows bent out wide so both open hands rest beside the head.
Tags: lyinglying downon backarms upfull body
How to draw the Lying, Arms Overhead pose
three-quarter view 
side view 
back view 
high-angle view
Picture a cactus shape pressed into the ground. Each upper arm leaves the shoulder sideways at roughly shoulder height, the elbow bends, and the forearm angles back in until the palm lands next to the ear. Left and right mirror each other closely, so nearly all the asymmetry you see comes from perspective rather than the pose. Everything below the ribs is quiet: the legs run parallel with locked-straight knees, the heels touch down, and the feet fall open a little at the ankles. The head rests roughly 10 cm above the ground and the chin drops a touch toward the chest.
Build the drawing from the high angle, which turns the figure into a clean diagram, a W of arms framing the head above a long single stem of legs. The front camera looks up the body from beyond the feet, so the soles and kneecaps block most of the torso and the arms shrink to two short wings at the far end. Three-quarter and side views squeeze everything into a thin horizontal band; use them to confirm that the shoulders, elbows, hips and heels share one floor line with nothing hovering. The low angle is the dramatic choice, with oversized feet in the foreground and the hands receding into the distance.
More on angles and common mistakes
Two errors show up often. Drawing the hands floating above the face turns a rest into a reach; here the forearms stay down and the fingers lie open on the ground. The other is stopping the forearms vertical at a crisp right angle, a surrender gesture, when they actually lean inward toward the crown. Watch the shoulders too: with the elbows raised this high, the shoulder blocks ride up toward the ears and the neck looks short from above.
Use it for someone asleep in long grass, stargazing, drifting on imagined water, or flat out after a race. The floor is not shown, so add sand, a bed sheet or a meadow yourself. In Edit this pose, straighten one elbow so that hand slides further past the head, and the mirrored frame breaks into a more casual, stretched-out sleeper.
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, Arms Overhead 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 flat on their back on the floor, legs straight and together, both upper arms out to the sides with the elbows bent so the open hands rest on the floor beside the head, calm face looking up, seen from above, plain background.
Midjourney
full body person lying flat on back, legs straight and together, arms bent out to the sides, open hands resting on the floor beside the head, calm restful mood, top-down view, plain light background --ar 3:2 --style raw
Stable Diffusion
1person, full body, lying, on back, on floor, legs together, straight legs, arms up, bent elbows, hands beside head, open hands, palms up, relaxed, sleeping, symmetrical, from above, simple background
Negative prompt
hands raised in the air, arms straight overhead, knees bent, crossed legs, lying on stomach, floating body, arched back, sitting up, extra arms, malformed hands, missing fingers, 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.
Have a photo of the pose you want?
Upload it to Photo to Pose. We detect the pose in your browser and put it on the mannequin, ready to adjust.