30 sec and 1 min head practice (stressful)

Hey Ophelia,

For someone who said they panicked while drawing, you did an amazing job with your head sketches, especially in such a short amount of time!

That said, I think you’re combining two almost opposite approaches (at least for beginner artists): the slow, methodical construction from primitive shapes (like the Loomis method) and the fast, loose, energetic style of gesture drawing, by setting a very (!) short timer for anything beyond a few defining force lines.

In my opinion, a quick timer works best for forcing yourself to see simpler defining forces (like 'lines of action') in complex, dynamic structures, such as the human body.

The head, however, is primarily a solid block, and a well-drawn face depends heavily on the correct placement of features in 3D space. That’s why methods like Loomis are so helpful when learning.

When I started learning to draw faces and heads, I used timers of 10 minutes or more (simply to avoid getting lost in the details and stay focused on the basics). I suggest using longer timers (or none at all) until you’re more comfortable with head shapes, and then experiment from there.

For shorter head sketches, like during quick figure drawing, I now only block in the nose, lips, and brow shadows while focusing on keeping the eye-line, nose, and mouth in parallel.

You also asked if it's okay to mix and match methods. While there are foundational techniques you need to learn (especially if you're aiming for realism), the best approach depends on your personal style. Take what works for you and leave the rest. Just keep drawing and you’ll get there. All these techniques are just stepping stones to help you improve and eventually commit everything to muscle memory, so you won’t have to think about them consciously anymore.

I hope this helps. Happy drawing!

Thank you so much!

Your critique was very, very helpful and encouraging. I will start useing a longer timer for the heads and faces then and stick to short timers and Class Mode for figueres. This might be a great combination for practice, since I have not come far in actually constructing bodies anyway. So focused construction exercise for faces and speed drawing with some basic shapes for bodys to get an idea of dynamics and movement.

Thank you a lot for your insight and for helping me understand that I was combining two kinds of practice in one session. This was a huge realization.

Happy drawing to you, too! And have a nice day :)

Hey! Using the cross hair for the brow line, centerline (both are half the cranial mass) to start off is a great method, especially for getting the angle of features in perspective. Do a whole bunch of these! 30 seconds, even less. Aaron Blaise once said, "if you feel like youre running into a wall, keep going, cause it usually means you're about to break through." So just lean into that panic and do these short bursts, only worrying about laying in those construction lines for the skull (a circle) and the centerline, brow, nose, and chin.