Drawing The Head And Hands By Andrew Loomis

[Nickie Koskinen]

Thehuman head and hands are the most difficult elements in figure drawing, but world-class illustrator Andrew Loomis's classic primer offers the solution. Revered among artists including the great Norman Rockwell and comics superstar Alex Ross for his mastery of figure drawing and clean, realist style, Loomis's hugely influential art instruction books have never been bettered.

Ironically, these tremendously valuable and influential texts were long out of print, leaving artists to discover them by word of mouth and prowl used bookstores, and later the internet, hoping used copies would turn up for a reasonable price. Copies of them in good condition would often sell for $250.00 to $300.00, sometimes more.

Much to the delight of myself and countless other artists, Titan did a superb job, bringing to life the character and appearance of the book in a facsimile hardback edition that actually surpassed the printing quality of the original.

The edition has been a tremendous success, and Titan has followed up with what is considered the second most important and sought after title in the series, Drawing the Head and Hands, and they provided me with a review copy.

As I expected, Titan has once again done Loomis justice with a superb job of reproducing the book. I can say without hesitation that the original book and its content are of tremendous value, and the beautiful reproduction makes it a joy to follow the instruction.

Here, Loomis expands on demonstrating how to draw the human figure in correct proportion by constructing it from a knowledge of its basic forms, and goes into the details of the head and hands with subtle, yet clear and strong drawings and diagrams.

In addition to building his approach on the fundamentals of human anatomy, he gives construction methods based on the underlying geometry, allowing you to turn and move the head and hands in your mind and position them in space when drawing. By marking off spatial divisions related to the major features, Loomis guides the reader through an understanding their basic proportions, and how those of the face in particular can vary from individual to individual.

The book goes into better detail than I have seen anywhere else on understanding the change in proportions that the human face and head undergo as we move from infancy through childhood into adulthood.

I bought my copies in a now defunct second hand store. They were in amazingly good condition and only cost $1.5o each (neiner, neiner..) When I was taking life drawing, I referred to them all the time. They are an invaluable part of my reference library.

If you find a copy of Three-Dimensional Drawing, buy it because the gallery in the original title (Successful Drawing) has been replaced by some of the more valuable perspective drawing lessons. I ran across my copy quite by accident almost 20 years ago and I still refer to it. Nomatter how advanced you become, you can never really outgrow Andy Loomis because he was a master of fundamentals.

Charley Parker a belated thank you to introducing and reminding many what a formidable artist and instructor Andrew Loomis was. The books are classics in the instruction of illusionistic pictorial structures. It is has been mentioned before but is important enough to merit mentioning again, in many respects illustrators were and are the last link to the imagery and thought of the Renaissance.

It goes in more detail in how to approach head construction, including the "draw this from a bunch of angles" phase. I like the approach of that book better than Head and Hands (or even Figure Drawing for All it\'s Worth), it goes from cartoon to realistic in small steps so you\'re less likely to be overwhelmed and is full of step-by-step examples. It\'s explanation for the "bunch of angles" phase is quite short, but it\'s all there is to it: The core skill to master for the whole process to work is the sphere, I mean, drawing a sphere with belivable longitude and latitude lines. So you could take the 250 box challenge and apply it to spheres. Once you know how to draw an equator on a sphere you can align features to it and the whole thing becomes much easier.

It goes in more detail in how to approach head construction, including the "draw this from a bunch of angles" phase. I like the approach of that book better than Head and Hands (or even Figure Drawing for All it's Worth), it goes from cartoon to realistic in small steps so you're less likely to be overwhelmed and is full of step-by-step examples. It's explanation for the "bunch of angles" phase is quite short, but it's all there is to it: The core skill to master for the whole process to work is the sphere, I mean, drawing a sphere with belivable longitude and latitude lines. So you could take the 250 box challenge and apply it to spheres. Once you know how to draw an equator on a sphere you can align features to it and the whole thing becomes much easier.

I don\'t understand fully your problem but I think lesson 5 information about head construction could be helpful. From what I understand of what you are saying, the only variety you need to change the angle of the head is to change the point where both lines cross. If you have a circle and both lines cross in the middle, the face is drawn from the front and if you move the crossing point to a side, you are drawing it sideways. If you move the crossing point in a direction the "viewer" moves in the opposite. If the crossing happens on the bottom of the circle, the viewer is on top on what is viewing.

I don't understand fully your problem but I think lesson 5 information about head construction could be helpful. From what I understand of what you are saying, the only variety you need to change the angle of the head is to change the point where both lines cross. If you have a circle and both lines cross in the middle, the face is drawn from the front and if you move the crossing point to a side, you are drawing it sideways. If you move the crossing point in a direction the "viewer" moves in the opposite. If the crossing happens on the bottom of the circle, the viewer is on top on what is viewing.

Just to add to the other advice, the truth is it is hard to do especially if you are not used to it. You have to experiment, try things, get things wrong. However after a period of time things start to connect and you start finding it a bit more intuitive. It is this hard work that reshapes your brain until you wonder what you found so difficult.

Maybe you could start off by adding the lines over a photograph, could be at the computer or in a newspaper/magazine idk whatever fits you best and then try to recreate the lines on paper, to check if you understood where the lines should go. Sometimes i do this when i\'m having a hard time finding the angles.

The Loomis method can be kind of confusing at first, it\'s kinda tricky on extreme angles, it took me some while to get used to it, but once you do becomes very intuitive. The most important thing is to understand where you should be looking for the angles, Proko explains this in his videos.

There\'s a Steve Houston video in which he explains how to construct the head, i don\'t think he mentions the Loomis method, but it\'s basically what he\'s talking about, and he also explains how this was applied in some artworks. His approach is very constructive and didactic.

Maybe you could start off by adding the lines over a photograph, could be at the computer or in a newspaper/magazine idk whatever fits you best and then try to recreate the lines on paper, to check if you understood where the lines should go. Sometimes i do this when i'm having a hard time finding the angles.

The Loomis method can be kind of confusing at first, it's kinda tricky on extreme angles, it took me some while to get used to it, but once you do becomes very intuitive. The most important thing is to understand where you should be looking for the angles, Proko explains this in his videos.

There's a Steve Houston video in which he explains how to construct the head, i don't think he mentions the Loomis method, but it's basically what he's talking about, and he also explains how this was applied in some artworks. His approach is very constructive and didactic.

I second checking out Fun with a Pencil, which is what I dipped into when wanting to learn how to draw the head in 2012. From memory, you draw a bunch of blobs and put features on them to start off with before moving on to the sphere. I couldn\'t draw circles very well at the time, so I simple traced a coin 20 times and then experimented with different ellipse configurations.

Another thing to try is to get a styrofoam ball (craft stores should have them), draw the verticle and horizonal lines in marker, and poke toothpicks through for the poles. You can then use this as an observational model to practise changing the angles, recording the different configurations of the ellipses, and move on to making up your own configurations.

I second checking out Fun with a Pencil, which is what I dipped into when wanting to learn how to draw the head in 2012. From memory, you draw a bunch of blobs and put features on them to start off with before moving on to the sphere. I couldn't draw circles very well at the time, so I simple traced a coin 20 times and then experimented with different ellipse configurations.

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