Today we have sabre drill. A girl practicing fencing with her coach. The prompt was blade. I took the time to do comic book style shading and highlights this time.
I did my best to get the lunge position and the clothing correct. My husband fences, so I got a bit of advice from him on that. The coach is based very roughly on his coach and this drill is very common for beginning sabre fencers.
Sabre is the hack and slash style of fencing. Foil and epee are the pokey styles. My daughter is deeply disappointed I drew sabre instead of epee. She thinks epee is the best. But sabre just doesn’t have as nice a sound effect. SMACK!
Karen B. Jones - Illustrator 
Oh to have such clean lines in my body as that of the girl! Really nice.
Thank you. Do you fence?
Great pic! Nice form. But when I learned saber I poked and got poked too — with some dark bruises 🙂 There is big difference in scoring between the two though.
Should the blade be slightly longer for a saber? Or did it just feel like the were longer when they were coming at me? 🙂
Well, as I understand it, it’s not so much that sabre can’t poke… but that foil and epee don’t slash. Their scoring is just done with the end. Sabre can score all along the blade because it’s based on the slashing cavalry sabre, which could both slash and stab.
The fencing club my husband and daughters used to attend were always referring to sabre as hack and slash and foil and epee as pokey. (Being a little silly entertains the kids.)
Oh, the blade might not be quite the right length. I wasn’t as careful with that as I was with the rest of the gear and the positions. It looks about like the sabres that I remember seeing, but I could be wrong. Especially about something like the length. Pretty sure I got the guard and handle right, though. I was careful with that.
As before, I enjoy your work 🙂
As before, I thank you. 🙂