Hey, guys, welcome to Proko. My name is Stan Prokopenko. It's been six years since I made my first Loomis head drawing video.
And since then I've gotten a lot of questions regarding the Loomis method. So, I think it's a good time to take a second look at it through a bunch of quick sketches and give you guys some tips on using the Loomis method and it should help you get better head drawings and quickly. This is going to be a three-part video series.
In the first video, I'll review the basics. Then in the second video, I will show you how to adapt the Loomis head on to heads of all shapes and proportions. And then in the third video, I'll show you a more intuitive approach using the Loomis method one more loosely.
So, Loomis method basically what we do is we have a cranial mass as a sphere, and then we attach a jaw to it with like a triangular boxy shape. That sphere cranium, we're going to chop off the side because the side of our head is kind of flat, right? So, we got to make sure we kind of chop that off, that's a flat plane.
And then in a neutral pose from the middle, that's where the eyebrows are going to be. I'm kind of wrapping this kind of like as a rubber band around the head. You'll see when we look up or down, it's not going to be a straight line like that it'll wrap around, kind of like an equator like a rubber band.
And then from the bottom of this oval, which isn't the bottom of circle, but the bottom of this oval up here, we bring another parallel line across that gives us the nose. We drop that down, and that gives us the chin. If this is too fast for you guys, go watch the initial series because that's where I really teach the method.
This is just going to be a quick overview. From here, we attach the jaw from the brow side plane down to the chin, and then from about a vertical halfway on the side plane, that's kind of where that jaw starts. It'll be different on different people and I'll show you guys how to change proportions.
But right now, I'm just drawing an average person. Actually I made this jaw taller than the middle third which on him it actually is, that bottom from the nose down to the chin is actually longer, from the nose to the brows. But right now, I'm drawing an average Loomis head.
Later on I will modify the Loomis heads to fit the exact subject. There you go. There's your average Loomis head and then from here, we got to divide the jaw in front and side plane.
So, the side of the chin starts right there, and then I kind of just bring it down from the corner of the forehead. And there you go. So, you got front plane, side plane, and you'll typically see core shadows or highlights along these planes, except in here where the eye socket is and that's going to be a deep socket, right?
So, you're not going to have a corner of a plane there which I will talk about a little more later. Basically, there's my quick sketch, this would be a complete Loomis head quick sketch. I wouldn't really go any further than that if I'm just doing quick sketch.
Maybe I'll do a centre line if I'm just doing a Loomis head quick sketch. I usually I don't do Loomis head quick sketch, usually I'll just do like I'll go a little bit further than, that features and some more construction lines in there. But in this lesson, I'm focusing just on Loomis heads and then maybe the occasional simple neck attachment to that.
Okay, so there you go. There's a nice Loomis head. This is a nice guide to then help me put features on top of that.
Let's go on to the next pose. And this next pose, we got Yonni, and he is looking down. And so, we're looking down at the top of his head.
So, I'm going to start with that cranial ball again, the first step is always just the ball. Now, the side plane, where do I chop it off? That'll depend on the side to side turn, the up and down, not so much.
But the tilt left and right. So, side to side, this is a much more front angle. So, I'm going to see less of the side more of the front.
This was about half and half. And also he's kind of tilting his head, it's not straight up and down. So, a few things will happen.
One, the cylinder or this oval will be narrower. And also I'm tilting it to kind of go with the angle of the head. The height of that oval relative to the ball is going to stay pretty much the same.
And when we have such a front straight on angle, what happens is on this far side, we're actually going to have to chop off a little bit of that as well. Because, you know, we're chopping this off and we're seeing an oval. On the other side, we won't see an oval because it's in the back, it's back there.
But we do have to chop this piece off. And so, I like to do that just to kind of help me visualize the rest of it. Okay, so there would be the top of the head, this is kind of like the forehead.
And then from the middle, I'm going to bring a line downward. Remember, this is wrapping around the head. And since he's tilting down, it's not going to be a straight line across.
Now, we have to wrap around the ball. So, this is now the brow ridge line, kind of tilting that. This is going to be parallel to the tilt of the head, right?
Because they're both going up and down. And then from there, we're going to wrap the same parallel line cross and then drop another one down to the chin. And in here, then you start getting foreshortening depends on really how close your eyes of the model, but in general, the thirds will get smaller and smaller as they go away from you.
But just a little bit, don't push it too much. You know, otherwise, unless the camera is like right there, right next to the person, then you'll see some really extreme fore- shortening. Just keep that in mind so that you don't do the opposite effect.
Unless that is the person's type where their jaw is just bigger than their forehead, then you can push it that way against foreshortening. But then we're not drawing the average anymore and it's deliberate at that point you're doing that on purpose. And then we can find the hairline by, again, kind of dropping or curving the same parallel line around, and this is a top plane.
All of this is top plane. Front plane, side plane, and that's it. There's my quick sketch Loomis head.
Okay, so now, we got a perfect side view of Veronica. So, again, we start with cranial ball. And then from a side view, this oval, this side plane that we chop off, it's just going to be right in the middle of that circle.
So, you have a circle within a circle, you could put it in or you can just ignore it. I dunno, I'll put it in just so I have my size reference. As a reminder for you guys, it's going to be about two-thirds of the height, this the side plane is about two-thirds of the height of the full circle.
We got one-sixth on both top and bottom and that's two-thirds. But again, like these measurements are for the perfect average person. Usually it's not going to be like that, usually you're going to have to change proportions.
And so, usually I do a more intuitive method, and I'll show you that later. But right now, let's get this perfect side view. So, drop from the forehead down to the chin, that angle.
Okay, so this from the middle of the circle going in here that's the brow ridge. Then from here, parallel line, that's the nose and then drop equal distance, there's the chin. Perpendicular line in the middle, that's where the jaw starts.
Attaching the jaw. And actually that might be a little taller, maybe like that. .
. bottom of the jaw to the neck. ♪ [music] ♪ Okay, in the hairline, again, from here, hairlines.
You get these equal thirds on an average person. Hairline, brow, nose, chin. Okay, one more thing I want to point out from a side view is that the height and the depth, the width from front to back is going to be the same.
So, it fits into a square, but it's not from this front plane it's from the tip of the nose. And again, an average length nose. So, you know, like say the nose is here, this length is equal to that length and that with that.
And then to the back it doesn't go to the hair because the hair changes so much, right? It could be a bald person, could be someone with very large hair in the back. So, it's from the tip of the nose to the back of the skull.
And then this is actually where the hair is. So, when you're measuring people from photos keep in mind that there's a bunch of mass, a bunch of distance from the head to the hair. So, really quickly I'm going to just add a little bit of a little indication of his nose, brow ridge, I like to bring out the muzzle of the lips and the teeth, and then that back in for the chin and the chin comes out again.
From a side view, the eye socket is just going to be this like rectangular shape like that. Right in there's the top of the cheekbone is like bottom of the eye socket. Like this rhythm and it goes to the top of the ear.
Now, how do you apply this method on people that don't fit the average proportions? I'll show you tomorrow. Hope you guys are enjoying the "12 Days of Proko Quick Sketch Edition.
" If you missed some episodes, I'll have links to all 12 down in the description. So, go check them out, watch every single one of them and subscribe. Bye.
