On All FoursPose Reference
Camera angles
On All Fours sets the wooden mannequin on hands and knees with the lower back dipped and the head raised, the shape yoga classes call cow pose.
Tags: kneelingfigure drawingfull bodyall foursback arch
How to draw the On All Fours pose
three-quarter view 
side view 
back view 
high-angle view
Four contacts make a box: two straight arms under the shoulders with palms flat and fingers spread, two knees directly under the hip joints, and the shins and insteps lying on the floor behind like a pair of rails. Weight splits roughly evenly between hands and knees. The spine is the only curved element. The middle of the back sinks toward the floor, the tailbone tips upward and the breastbone moves forward between the arms, so the back traces a shallow valley from pelvis to shoulders. The neck continues that extension, and the head lifts until the face looks ahead rather than down.
Draw the all fours pose from the side first. The side view from the figure's left shows a clean rectangle of arms, floor and thighs with the dip of the back hanging inside it; check that the arm and thigh verticals stay parallel. The front view stacks the head over the hands and nearly hides the legs, and the back view shows mostly the pelvis block and upturned soles, so both depend on foreshortening: the trunk recedes straight away from you and should shorten, not stretch. The high angle shows the shoulders and hips as two equal widths.
More on angles and common mistakes
Mistakes to avoid: placing the hands ahead of the shoulders, which turns the shape into a reach; sitting the hips back toward the heels; and bending the neck so sharply that the head looks snapped back. The opposite spinal shape, a rounded back with the head dropped, is cat pose, and blending the two gives a muddled curve. The wooden figure has no mat or floor texture; the ground is implied only by the palms and shins.
Use it for yoga and fitness illustration, a character searching under furniture or crawling across a room, play scenes, or as a base for creature studies. In Edit this pose, round the spine upward and drop the head between the arms to turn cow pose into cat pose, giving you both halves of the classic warm-up sequence.
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.
On All Fours 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 on hands and knees in yoga cow pose: straight arms under the shoulders, palms flat with fingers spread, knees under the hips, shins and insteps flat on the floor. The lower back dips gently and the head lifts to look forward. Plain background, full body side view.
Midjourney
full body person on all fours, yoga cow pose, straight arms under shoulders, palms flat with fingers spread, knees under hips, shins flat on floor, lower back dipped, head raised looking forward, plain background --ar 3:2 --style raw
Stable Diffusion
1person, full body, all fours, on hands and knees, cow pose, yoga, straight arms, palms on floor, knees under hips, shins on floor, arched back, head up, looking ahead, side view, plain background, simple background, fitness
Negative prompt
nsfw, rounded back, cat pose, hands ahead of shoulders, hips sitting on heels, bent elbows, toes tucked, crawling stride, extra arms, fused fingers, missing hands, broken neck, cropped feet
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.