Loomis head practice
© 2022 HCSketchesHere are some examples of today's loomis head practice, based on the photos from the "faces and expression" section of this website. I used a 2-minute interval. I would really appreciate your critique. Obviously this is hard to critique without seeing the original images (and some of the proportions may seem off because some of the models had their mouths wide open etc) but just a general critique of my structures and 3d shapes and any obvious mistakes would be so helpful before I move on to looking at facial features. Thank you so much in advance :-) Helen
capnlove
Pretty solid 3d shapes; you're definitely on the right track!
I'd say that the forehead of your characters feel a bit too "rounded"; think of the different angles of foreheads from a side-view and maybe think of them as being just a bit more flattened, a slightly stretched out plane which stands out from the spherical shape of the overall head structure.
It also might help to flatten the temples for the front-facing view to help with the head shape.
The difference is very slight however but I think it would make the drawings a bit more natural.
Keep it up! :)
HCSketches
Thank you. I've just been using circles as the base but want to adjust them according to my observations of face shapes so that is something I need to look into. Thanks for the tip.
Jcmlfineart
HCSketches,
No matter the face, the general form of the head is always the same. What matters most is the placement of the occipital bones because these bones shape the nose, eyes and how the mussels will fill the face.
The best thing to do is pay most attention to two general areas because they also will help you form the shapes of racial differences. We all have bones, right, but how they form our face shape is different from someone who has Asian descent from someone who has Indian descent. We are entirely speaking of form, not racial bias.
Kay, now that that political pho-pah has been cleared. What are the main places to look at?
1. The outside edge of the eyebrow forms back into the skull. Look at the mid-peak point of the brow to the bottom that meets up with the side of the eye that is most left or most right.
2. The inner bottom edge starts on the nose bone's side, near the tear duct to the midpoint of the cheek, nose area.
These two sections should make two parallel lines from each other and result in a diamond-like trapezoid when formed into one shape. You can find where the eyeball pushes out of the face shape the most with this. It also will help you figure out how to make the lid shape and how other essential skull structures fit into place in virtually any position.
If you can get your hands on a few skulls, I suggest drawing them. Some school libraries have such things for medical professionals, criminal labs and artists like us. See if your local university has the skulls of different races and take advantage if you can. Yeah, it is a bit ghoulish, but also well informative.
If you need more help with facial structures, I suggest reading The Atlas of the Human Anatomy by Stephen Rogers.
All the best,
JCML Fine Art
Heya,
So first off I think that you are on the right path, there are no obvious mistakes, just a complaint that I would like to make is that I can see the places where you were hesitating, and that you kinda scratched those parts, It's ok to do that, But, you should always have a line that is clearly more visible than the other ones, a "main" line if you will, otherwise people just kinda use their imagination to fill in the blank. basically less lines. If you want to learn more about this, try typing "line confidence" on youtube there are some wonderfull videos out there.
Have a nice drawing session.
Thanks for this. You're right that my lines need to be more confident. I will look into this more and practice my line confidence. Helen