on drawing the head from various angles. Hopefully there will be some interest and I'll continue

making more of these for you guys!

In this first video I'm going to *attempt* to summarize and simplify Andrew Loomis' approach

to drawing the head. Here we go..

If we remove the eyes, nose, lips, and ears from the head we are left with 2 simple masses.

The first is a ball for the cranium and the second is a boxy shape for the jaw.

The cranium is spherical, but with the sides flattened. So, chopping off a slice from both

sides gets us a simplified but close representation of the cranial mass.

When drawing the head, I'll start with the circle for the ball. and after a few failed

attempts... rip out your hair. take a deep breath and try again. But seriously, make

sure it looks like a circle and at least the height and width are the same.

The oval is a bit more tricky. The height will always be the same, no matter what angle

you're drawing the head from. It's 2/3 the height of the circle. So I'll usually look

at the area From the center of the circle to the top, divide that area into thirds,

and this top third will be where the oval begins. and the same for the bottom.

The width of the oval depends on the direction the person is looking. Compare the width of

the front plane to the width of the side plane. The top portion of the oval falls on the corner

of the forehead. This is where the front plane meets the side plane. This area is usually

rounded so it's open to the artist's interpretation. I've found that it usually lies near the end

of the eyebrow.

So as I just showed we indicate the left and right turn of the head by the width of the

oval. Now we need to find the up and down tilt. This is indicated by an angle along

the side plane. If the head is tilted up, the angle will point up and if the head is

tilted down, the angle will point down. The degree of the tilt will determine how steep

to make this line. I like to use the angle from the ear to the brow.

From there, I'll continue that line over to the front plane. Since this line represents

the brow, pay attention to the angle from one brow to the other.

Then, draw a curve parallel to the the first one, this time starting from the bottom of

the oval. This represents the bottom of the nose. Drawing the same line again from the

top of the oval, would bring you to the hairline.

Since the face can be broken down into nearly perfect thirds, chin, nose, brow, and hair,

we can use the measurements we've already found, to find the length down to the chin.

Observe the general shape of the jaw and draw in the major angles starting from the brow

coming down to the chin, and going around to the side plane of the head. It's usually

about halfway into the oval, or a little bit further back.

We've already found the side plane of the cranium. Now we need to do the same thing

with the cheek and jaw area. There's a rhythm that starts at the top of the ear and curves

down to the outside of the chin. Then find the centerline of the face. Remember, this

is the center of the front plane, not the center of the whole head width. and finish

with the neck. Now that we have the foundation of the head established we can finish it by

putting in all the features! eyes, nose, lips, ear, hair, jaw, cheeks, chin. Don't worry,

I'll explain this step in more detail in another video. Each feature deserves it's own tutorial.

This approach is really good to establish the perspective of the head. A good exercise

is to try to think about the head as a simple elongated box. The angles in the front plane

of the face such as hair line, brow line, nostrils, lips, and chin will be the same

as the angles on the front plane of the box.

The angle on the brow line to ear is the same as the angle on the side plane of the box.

These angles are really important because they establish the head as a three dimensional

form in space.

Let's go through that one more time.

Start with a circle for the cranium.

Oval for the side plane of the head

Angle to show the person looking up or down.

Draw an identical curve to find the nose

And double that distance to find the chin

Attach the jaw and you have a 3 dimensional representation of the head ready for the features.

At first this approach might seem a bit technical with a lot of important details to remember

but once you get the hang of it, it actually becomes really easy. So get that sketchbook

out and practice this a hundred times, with various angles.

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