Learning Loomis; Drawing Heads Part 1

I recently finished a 4-week class on Sktchy’s Art School, “Drawing the Human Head with Mike Creighton” based on the Loomis method. I highly recommend Mike’s class if you struggle with making people look like actual human people, let alone looking like very specific people.

Mike is a great teacher who explained things well, demonstrated the technique in great detail, taught us just enough anatomy and generously answered all of my questions so that I finally could understood the how and why of the Loomis method.

Loomis was an illustrator who developed a method of simplifying the structure of the head (and body) into a sort of generic template or abstraction that can easily be adjusted to draw realistic people from imagination or accurately capture a likeness. I was surprised to discover that with only slight changes for age, gender, and ethnicity, all human faces pretty much line up and divide up the same way.

Below are some first attempts at drawing people early in the course, before I’d really gotten the hang of it. The image above was done about halfway through the course after several weeks of just practicing the Loomis abstracted head in profile, 3/4 view and frontal view and placing features in it.

I’m still learning but it has made a big difference in my ability and confidence in drawing people as you’ll hopefully see in the next several posts with sketches from the class and then post-class practice on my own.