5 Common Loomis Method Mistaks to Avoid for Better Portrait Drawings

Hi everyone, I'm Sally and today we're talking about 5 common mistakes or bad habits when using the Loomis method for drawing faces and how we can improve and create better portraits. The Loomis method has made portrait drawing a lot more understandable for me and I was finally able to grasp some basic concepts of proportions, shapes and perspective. It is a great tool when used and adapted thoughtfully, however, I think there are a lot of misinterpretations due to its massive popularity these days. I personally also don't think it is very suitable for beginners, as you do require some knowledge of basic anatomy and 3-dimensionality. For this video I will use a reference photo to visualize my talking points. So let's get started with common mistake number 1. Misplacing the centerline So you have your ball shape, which is the first step of a Loomis head, and the centerline should now follow. If we look at our reference here, I notice people draw more what they think is right, instead of observing the object closely. In this case, it's easy to put the centerline like this, thinking, okay, centerline is in the middle of the face, straight line, but this is a bit sloppy. Try to really determine the tilt and direction of the head. This is not a front view of the face, although it looks close to it, but her face is pointing more towards the right side. You can clearly confirm this by looking at her right eyebrow disappearing a bit, while the left eyebrow is completely visible, along with the side of her head and ear. When you place the centerline, keep in mind that it's not a straight line, it wraps around the ball and connects the middle of the hairline with the chin, going through the middle of the nose and mouth. It should look something like this. Jumping to common mistake number 2, which is Ignoring perspective and the side of the head Another common habit I see with connecting the side of the head to the front is that people don't keep the perspective in mind and also the side being flat. What helps me understanding the greater picture here is imagining the head in a box, with the front, sides and back facing each side of the box. That way you will start thinking in a 3D room and also be able to remember to not just extend the brow line to the side, but to adjust it to the right perspective. And it will also help with placing the features, since for example the ear is placed between brow and nose line. There are many useful relationships between a lot of facial features, but we are not able to fully use these measurements if we don't understand the shape of the head. I feel like people oftentimes focus too much on the basic lumus head with the cut of side circles, but don't really apply the logic behind. I'm not excluding myself here, I was struggling with it too, because everything is easy to apply to a straight front view, but when it comes to more difficult angles and perspective, it's a whole other story, right? This box exercise you just saw is great to sharpen your sense for this specific problem. With that being said, we can move on to the next common mistake. Ignoring basic anatomy and three-dimensionality I notice people are often a bit lost after finishing the very basic lumus head. I think it can be misleading, with so many lumus tutorials on the internet nowadays, that this would be all you need to know and accomplish. But don't stop here. Right now, the head we constructed looks very flat and not defined. So in order to give it the realistic twist needed, there is knowledge about basic anatomy required. This grid-like head is just supposed to be a very rough guideline and measurement help for you to work with. You still have to fill it in with life and shapes, so if you don't have a decent understanding of how facial features look from different angles, you will dive in completely blind. To show you what I mean is, look at the center line we drew. It is just a straight flat line, but if we consider anatomy and three-dimensionality, the center line would look something like this. So let's take a look at the nose we might place between brow and nose line, because we already determined the border for the nose with this, right? So people might think, alright, time to place the nose between and that's it. I'm exaggerating this, by the way, just to give you an example, but if you don't know any better and just take the basic loomis head as an ultimate rule you stick to, you might do this. But if you have some basic knowledge of facial planes, you know about the glabella and that the actual nasal body doesn't begin at the brow line. This is a part where the forehead carves into the face a bit more before the nose is shaped away from the face. And this is just an example to show you that we still have to do our homework, unfortunately, and study the actual face without loomis. But the good thing is, the more faces we draw, the more we observe of what's going on in the face, and then you slowly start learning more and more about the structure and planes of the face. What helps too is to look at different faces and spot the similarities in basic anatomy. Don't over rely on the loomis head because there's so much more to it, and by the way, this is all pointed out by loomis himself in his book, but I feel like a lot of people like to just take the very basic head guide out of it and ignore the rest. The loomis method won't help you with learning how facial features behave in different angles. The next common mistake I want to talk about is placing facial features randomly. And with randomly, I mean, like I said before, just stopping at the very basic loomis head, thinking, okay, I have all the areas I need right now to place my features in, so the eye must be somewhere here. And eyebrows, somewhere on the brow line, right? Again, this point intertwines with a previous one I talked about, but there are a lot of very useful measurement tools loomis gives you to work with here. These are super helpful and I recommend memorizing them because they did so much for me and my proportions when drawing heads. It's up to you where to start, but if you want to do so with the eyes, know that you cannot be that off by placing them in the middle of the head, not the face, but the whole head. So we can draw a middle line of the whole head, and that's where we can place the corners of the eye later. But now we still don't know how big they should be. To use what we already established, we have the bottom of the nose down here, right? And we know where the chin ends on the chin line, so in between we can put the mouth line. Now you might think the mouth line is right in the middle between nose and chin, but that's not correct. Loomis sections this area in three equal parts, and the mouth line lies on the bottom of the first third. What's closer to the middle in between chin and nose is actually the lower lip. Now we have the mouth line and can use that for the eyes again, because the corners of the mouth will roughly be close to the middle of the eye. And with that we can come up with the size of the eye a bit easier. Loomis pointed out that the inner corners of the eyes connect to the nostrils, and that's how we know how wide the nose should be. Another trick for the ear is that it lies in between the brow and nose line. Seeing those connections will help you tremendously in the long run, as you will always have these relationships between the features you can use to correct yourself and also to compare with your reference. My last common mistake I want to talk about is over-relying on the Loomis method and rules. This is an extremely important point to make and in my opinion actually the most important one. When discovering the Loomis method for you just as I did, it was so exciting to finally have a method that clicks for you and actually makes sense, but don't put all your trust in it when it comes to drawing from a reference. I think this is also the most understood and misleading aspect of the Loomis method or Loomis teachings in general. If you want to draw from a reference, make the reference your priority. Take Loomis guidelines as an analysis of the reference you see. I did the mistake in the past too, where I found myself following every single step religiously, only to realize what I did versus the actual photo doesn't match. And that's because how Loomis said, each face is different and unique. Each photo has a unique angle and emotion to capture. Loomis can't help you with drawing her specific eyebrows or the volume of her lips, the definition of her nostrils. Those are all things you have to observe and interpret. The Loomis head we drew in the beginning is a great tool and approach to structure a head and I think it is great for drawing from imagination, but if you put too much weight on the raw blueprint, you might miss the core of your reference. When I draw portraits, I don't mind the ball shape being off a bit and I correct my guidelines all the time. What I find useful for drawing from references is trying to understand the relationships between the features rather than nailing the basic Loomis head. It can be quite difficult to see the Loomis head in a reference and even if you do, it doesn't guarantee success for capturing your reference right. I think when drawing from a photo, the most important thing should be the photo. Practice and sharpen your observation skills, as many famous artists say, the better you observe, the better you draw portraits. Also, find your own adaptation of the Loomis method and figure out what works best for you. This is not about just following plain rules. In the end, you want to create a piece of art you want to be proud of, so everyone has to wander off when needed and find their own path. With that being said, I will finish this portrait now with the shading process, stay here if you want to see the timelapse and finished result. I hope you found these tips useful and I wish you much success for your portrait drawings in the future. Bye!