Hey guys, Stan Prokopenko here. This is part three of a three-part series
on the Loomis method. If you missed the first two,
links are in the description. In the other two videos,
I showed you the basics of the Loomis method and then how to adapt it to any
head shape. But once you get comfortable with the Loomis method,
you don't have to follow you know each line step-by-step, you can apply it
to your drawing intuitively. It's kind of like after you learn anatomy,
you don't add every bone and muscle to your figure drawings,
you let them knowledge inform your decisions throughout the drawing.
So most of the time I don't follow the step-by-step formula that I showed
you earlier, I think about the basic forms, but I'm not literal with each line.
As I draw the shapes that are more specific to the person,
I imagine the Loomis head, and it's kind of a combination of what I
know and my observation of the subject. And I'll scatter parts of the simple
forms throughout. For example, I didn't start with a circle cut off the
sides and add the jaw. Instead I started with the overall shape
of the head. Then I found only a part of the side plane at the forehead,
where it's most obvious. And then I started observing more specific
angles along the outer edge, and I started applying a few of those,
you know the curves from the brow to the top of ear, and from the bottom of the
nose to the bottom of the ear. You know, all the same lines, just not in really the
same order, just in an order that made sense as I was drawing it,
as I'm measuring things, as they make sense to me.
I'm thinking of the Loomis head concept and I'm applying it.
And I'm just being more specific to his likeness and the shapes I'm seeing
on his head. And I'm just kind of letting the Loomis head inform what is happening
under the surface. And I'm going to start putting some features on,
because like you know I'm being specific to what I'm actually seeing.
So, sometimes the side of the head or side of the face here, like the contour here is
the nose, it's not the cheekbone. So I'm seeing the tip of the nose all the
way up here kind of by the top of the bridge. Just because we are looking
up at him so much that the tip of the nose is…you know, we're seeing so much of this
bottom plane, that the tip of the nose is all the way up here.
Very counterintuitive, you know, if you're not careful and you
don't observe, you might just draw it kind of like, you know more of a neutral
pose where the tip of the nose is closer to the bottom of the nose.
But really this line here that goes to the side of the…sorry, the bottom of the ear,
that's the base of the nose, that's where it connects to the face.
And then I like to kind of create a bottom plane shape, and then from there figure
out the eye socket, a negative shape from the nose, something like that.
And I'm still comparing angles. All right, this is a parallel to this, to this.
And I've got to remind myself this is a quick sketch, I'm not doing a lay-in
of his head. I mean, I guess I kind of I am.
It's just a quicker lay-in.
Okay, I feel like that's probably good
for the lay-in. Not a lay-in, probably good enough for this
quicksketch. If I go any further I'm just going to start adding details that really
don't…that are kind of outside this concept, of the concept of this video just
of Loomis heads. There you go.
In this next one, I'm going to approach it
again in more of an intuitive way. But I'm going to do a back pose.
I don't think I've ever really shown you guys how the Loomis head applies
from the back. So let's start this. Okay, angle, very general angle from forehead
to chin. I'm seeing the jaw kind of going like this. There's a curve
like that, but that's just the skin being pinched because she is bringing her chin
in towards her neck. Once you have the Loomis head,
you know more as a kind of an intuitive approach, you'll start to be able
to imagine what things are like. Even though I don't see most of the angles
of her face, I can kind of imagine what they are. Like there's not that many
options of what could be happening back there. So I have the neck connecting
to the base of the skull. I guess I'm going to try to ignore the
hair for now kind of, I mean it's tight on her head,
so it's not that far off. But, all the hair right here I'm just going
ignore that and draw the back of her skull, the neck attaches.
A center line along the neck helps. And then the ear attaches... what,
like somewhere like right there? It's very close to the edge.
It's kind of like this very awkward angle for the ear too, you don't usually see it
like this.
So the side plane is like right here. And she's bringing her chin in,
which means there's kind of a down tilt.
So, if I were to see through the neck, I would see that the other side of the jaw
like somewhere in here, connects to the chin. We've got the bottom plane of the
jaw like right there, but I don't see all that,
that's covered by the neck. This will all be parallel to this angle that
I drew. Very important to keep track of all your parallels, especially the
horizontal parallels. That keeps everything on your...on the
face aligned. You know, if the eyes are going this way,
the nose is this way, and then lips are back this way again,
and then the chin is this way, you can feel the distortion.
I mean obviously everything here is a horizontal, everything going
along from eye to eye, nostril to nostril, lip to lip, unless you've got
an expression you know, you could raise your eyebrow higher, but the skull
underneath still stays parallel. Your eyebrows might go up,
but you still have that structure of the brow ridge that is parallel,
so that kind of stuff. You still need to keep those parallels
tracked correctly. So brow ridge. We don't really see the nose,
but it would be here, back here as I wrap this line around.
But we do see that little rhythm from the top of the ear, connecting
to the cheekbone.
I feel like I need to bring the neck out more closer to the chin.
I'm not capturing that inward angle. And then that means this …that I made the
next too wide, so I have to bring this in. There you go. These are quick sketches,
we can make these quick adjustments.
And a few gestural strokes for the hair. I'm just trying to create some kind
of nice design in there, track the shapes, and I'm trying to do it quickly.
All right, good enough for this, it's a back view. If I were to really go
further with this, I would just try to make my hair attractive,
like this whole drawing would be about the hair. And I didn't really give too much
attention to the hair. So, it's kind of an ugly sketch, but hey,
the Loomis head underneath is kind of working. Let's see, let's do a few more,
and I'm just going to…I want to show you guys a little bit more about you know
placing features on the Loomis head. So last one. We've got Lucy Liu,
great structure, especially on the cheekbones. Pretty much kind
of an average…you know to got those average thirds going on there,
a lot of I think the proportional tricks that we follow will align here.
So I'm going to start with that circle, I'm following the process,
just to keep this well structured.
Typically on a female, on a kind of an average female,
the difference in the jaw from a male is the angles here. On a male you'll have
more squared-off angles, so it'll come down, kind of straight
down and then over. On a female, it'll start going forward much quicker and
then just kind of you know average, you're just thinking general male,
general female. And I do see that on her as well, from the ear she got a very
strong forward angle. You can still have a sharp corner here
as it goes to more of that bottom plane, but the angle goes forward from the ear.
I want to just get this average Loomis head kind of placed in so that I could
start showing you guys the features. I'm just going do a little bit, just
because this isn't a features lesson. I feel like her cheekbones are so
important because they're so large and defined that I need to place them before I
put all the other features in. Because when I put the other features
in I'm going to be judging everything based off what's there,
and if I judge things in this area around, you know, base it off of this line,
I'm going to be off quite a bit, like if I start putting the nose in here.
That's why it's important to do big shapes first, then go to details,
because you're going to base your details off of the big shapes you have
on there already, or any shapes that you have on there already.
And if you don't have the big shapes figured out correctly,
your detail will be wrong, usually.
Okay, for the brow ridge we have this line kind of as an equator around the sphere,
but the eyebrows don't follow that, there's more of an arc this way,
and then back down on the sides. And then from there we get in kind of the
side of the nose. From this point right here, that's where the nose connects,
right on the center line. That's where I look for where the edges
of the nostrils will be. And then the tip of the nose isn't going
to be right in the middle, it depends on the angle. If she's…well,
she is facing this way, and so the tip of the nose is going to be
all the way over here.
I'm probably not going to get that great of a likeness just because I usually need
to spend like a longer time measuring things out and like really figuring
out all the shapes. Some people can get a likeness immediately.
But, in a quick sketch I kind of just…hopefully it looks like a woman.
So, from the nostrils as you go up, that's generally where the tear ducts are
going to be. And then her eyes are angled.
The lips don't fall on the straight line here
for the center line. The tooth cylinder kind of protrudes
out from it, and the lips protrude out from it. But from the center line,
I usually kind of extend a curve to the top of the chin, and then the chin also
comes out from that. So that's kind of a more accurate
center line. In fact, most of the places along the center of the
face don't actually line up with the center line, you know, the center of the
nose is actually here, it comes out, and then right here it aligns again.
Then the brow ridge is actually there and then it kind of does this sort of thing
for the center line. So the center line goes you know over all
the features, but it's good to think for this you know the lips,
just this cylinder kind of puck shape. And from there I like to find an angle
from the nostril to the corner of the lips. From here it's almost straight down.
The bottom of the bottom lip is about halfway. I'm seeing this as almost
a straight, horizontal line. And then remember the middle is
right there, so that's where I'm going to put that little V shape of the top
of the lip.
That's pretty much all the feature information. I'm just going to add the
hair and then we're all done.
Cool, so I think that's good enough resemblance to call this one decent.
If you still have any questions, let me know in the comments.
And check back for more 12 Days of Proko: Quicksketch Edition.
I got a lot more good stuff coming. I'll see you tomorrow.