Framing techniques

Depending on the purpose of an illustration, some limitations can come into play and one of them is framing. My card art is viewed on smartphones, so the characters need to be large enough to discern details and this means sometimes they won’t fit into the frame. There are a few rules of thumb on how to crop figures: don’t cut where there are any joints, never cut through the hands (they should be either visible or out of the picture) and, for portraits, avoid cropping the ears or chin.