Asaro

Hello again, Pasta. This is the greatest study of the Asaro head I've ever seen! Greatest job on your gestures, guts, and forces. Greatest job on your silhouettes and spaces. Greatest job on your proportions and angles. But most importantly, greatest jobs on your lights, shadows, and of course, gestalt(the whole). Please keep on pushing your farthest and hardest.

Hi Pasta,

As a follow up on what I said on your other portrait, allow me a comment on your Asaro head. Thing is, I have been buggering you with getting acquainted to some methods, and yes, I probably mentioned John Asaro, too.

Now what you did, you basically used an Asaro head as reference, and given your skill of observation and your experience with your pen led you the usual 90% of the way in drawing it.

I am not going to sort through all the details on this one to dicuss where you nailed it, and where some lines or decisions look off. I sadly have to tell you, that you entirely missed the mark regarding its purpose.

Thing is, Loomis method, Reily method, Hampton method, Asaro method, Bridgman,... they all off course lead to observable results, which when executed by someone who has trained them, tend to look amazing. Just, if you then go and use the tools, that you are already comfortable with, to try to copy those results, you aren't actually leaving your comfort zone and learning much from it.

All those results come with a set of instructions, how to train to achieve them. Start with a sphere to indicate the skull. Establish brow line, establish center line, next measure the distance between.... and on and on and on. An easy step by step introduction suitable for beginners to follow along. (At least, that is what it says on the marketing note, in practice a lot of them are far more complex to follow, than their authors want to admit, especially when it then comes to matching those abstractions to a random reference)

I can see the temptation with your skill and experience to decide to just skip the tutorial and try to tackle the end boss immediately. Following instructions is probably not your idea of how you want to spend your drawing time, and you are clearly no longer in the beginner camp.

Just, for once, as an experiment, to see how it goes, my strong recommendation: Read the effing manual, chose a method and a teacher, follow the instructions, and repeat them, until you know all the steps on the list by heart, and no longer need to consult your cheat sheet to know what measurement or line is supposed to come next. Then observe, how it influences your intuitive drawing, the way you measure proportions and placements out of the corner of your eyes. while you watch your pen doing its job, the way you just start to look at faces differently.

John Asaro might not be my first choice, because his list of instructions is frankly quite detailed and long, so it will take a lot of stamina just to test out the result. Probably use Andrew Loomis, the pdf for his OG "Fun with a pencil" is easy to find free on the webs, but some youtube courses named "how to draw the Loomis head" or so might be even better, as his ideas got a bit more streamlined and adapted to modern visual work procedures over time.

Practice it, until you are comfortable to draw a Loomis head from any random angle, without looking at instructions or references. I don't think it will take you more than a few hours to get there, and I promise it won't hurt that much. Just so you see, what I am talking about.