Hey, guys. People are always asking me how to fit the
Loomis method onto people's faces and heads that don't necessarily fit the average proportions. Which is pretty much everyone, we're all different. So, we're gonna have to learn how to modify
and adapt the Loomis method to the subject that we're drawing. I got a few people here that don't fit those
standard proportions, even a baby. And then at the end, I'll show you how to
adjust for an open-jaw, open-mouth. So, let's do this. All right, so, the first one is Ron Perlman,
and I think you can probably tell his jaw is much larger than the average person. His forehead is smaller, you can see, when
you look at those thirds, you try to measure from here to here and here and here and here
to here. They're not equal thirds on him. So, let's adjust those. And also his jaws wider than average. So, we'll have to just add a different shape
to that cranium. So far, everything's kind of the same. Now, this is where I started to deviate. Right in here instead of putting in the middle,
I'm gonna put kind of bring the jaw back a little bit but he's got a wider jaw. And then, I think, I'm gonna put the brow
ridge in the middle kind of where it's supposed to go, and then the hairline seems to be just
kind of lower on him. So, that makes his forehead smaller. Probably like, right there. And then I'm gonna bring the nose line up
a little bit as well. But Imma make that a little bit taller than
the forehead because I see kind of a progressive enlarging of thirds. This is the shortest, then this is a little
longer and then, this, the chin is the longest. I guess right there is good. And then usually, I would kind of come in
and cut in like that. But on him, I'm gonna drop a...it's pretty
much a straight down for quite a while, all the way here and make that chin much wider. Same thing on the other side, wide jaw indication. Front plane side plane, really shows you,
how wide this chin is over here and how wide the jaw's back here. From this angle, you wouldn't usually see
the corner of the jaw come out that much from the side plane. It'd be usually pretty subtle, plus the front
plane is already so wide. Okay. Then we got the neck. Okay. I'm not gonna try to add the features just
yet but I feel like, we have to add this shape, this more square-ish shape up at the top. Otherwise, it's not really gonna look like
him. And that's more by kind of caused by the hair
shape, but maybe a little bit of the head as well. Maybe he's got more of a, square head. So, changing the proportions of the Loomis'
head, to fit the people you draw, isn't gonna be just about changing the relationship between
the third's. It's also gonna be about changing the shapes,
you know, is the jaw wider? Is the jaw...? Does the jaw come forward more? Is it more indented from the chin all we back
towards the neck? Is the forehead a little bit skinnier over
here, so the side plans are a little bit tilted more? You know, there's so many things that could
happen to these forms, the way they're distorted. It's not just gonna be different lengths on
the thirds. But that is a good place to start. Actually, let me show you guys a page from...
this is Fun with a Pencil and I'm sure there's more examples of, this in his Head and Hands
but I couldn't find it for some reason, I don't know where I put it. But here's a page where he's got very different
jaws types, all right, like kind of average. This one looks like, he's bringing it forward
from this middle line quite a bit. This one's really wide. This one's kind of straight, creating, obviously
very different character types. And then over here he's got square head, square
jaw, more of a pointy jaw, pointed chin, still square head, round head, really wide jaw,
lots of varieties. And here from profile, look at the differences,
look at, these still kind of look like believable people, but look how different they could
be. Chin all the way over here or chin pointing
all the way over here. Lots of variety in people, but the basic concept
of round cranium with the sides chopped off and kind of a boxy pyramid-like jaw attached
to it, it applies to everybody, you just have to distort these forms. You know, when you know the average,
when you're really comfortable with the average from any angle, you can look
at a subject, and you can instantly see how they're different from the average, because
you have something to compare it to in your mind, right? You know what to look for. So, even though you're usually not going to
be drawing an average Loomis head when you're drawing someone from life, it's still a very
important to know that average Loomis head. Ok, let's do another one. This time we got Tom Hanks, okay. And you can see, okay, you can see in this
one he's got a very large forehead. And his hairline kind of adds to that large
forehead but, you know, from the bottom of the nose to the chin is actually not that
much smaller than his forehead, so it's more of his middle third that's just really small. So, again, let's draw this one. Again, start with this cranium; and notice
how much lighter my initial lines are than my final lines. I slowly go darker and darker as I'm getting
more and more comfortable with my placement. I don't wanna start dark because then I can't
erase. Basically, when I look where that side plane
is, I look for the... about right in here, right where the forehead turns and kind of where the eyebrow
peaks or sometimes where the eyebrow ends. Really depends on the person. But on him it's about halfway, to get that
perfect three-quarter view. Okay. And then, he's not looking up or down. There you go, there's the brow ridge, maybe
I should lower it a little bit. Okay. Well, with that, makes some room for that
forehead. I would put the nose here but because this
middle third is supposed to be smaller, I'm gonna move it up but I don't think his
head overall is very different from the average, like his head shape, maybe a little more square
but as far as the length versus width, is kind of the same, so I'm gonna kind of use where
the nose should be to find the chin, and then I will bring the nose up, right about there. And then his hairline is like, almost to the
top, so it's gonna actually, go up a little bit, that and then the actual hairline, like
the actual hair pattern up here it goes even farther up. As far as the width of the jaw, seems like
it's kind of average. He's got maybe a little more of a square here
but he's getting a little bit, you know, droopiness on the sides, this isn't a young photo of him. And so, we can't really see the structure
of the jaw as well on him, as on a younger person with a very defined jawline. But it's okay. It's somewhere in here. And actually, on him I feel like that
ear is kind of further back, so I'm gonna start the job more over here and then I have,
I see this, like, little fat pad over here, a little crease and another crease here. I don't see the jawline but it would be like,
right here, right through there but I just don't see it. Instead what I'm seeing is another...kind
of a downward plane right here. And keep in mind, it's not gonna look like
them yet because I'm not adding features, the features will really, I mean, the head
of the shape of the head should look like them but you're not gonna be like, "Oh, yeah. That's Tom Hanks just without features on
it." And he does have kind of a square head up here
and his hairs pretty short, so I don't know how much of that is his hair creating that
corner, and how much is his head creating a little bit of the corner. So, I'm gonna just draw that hair shape. And as far as the actual shape along here,
I'll show you guys that a little bit later in this video. I kind of consider that as part of the features
like the cheekbones, you know, all the muscles and pads around the jaw. I usually just do like, "Okay, what's the
basic shape of the jaw?" How wide is it? Where's this corner? Where is the front plane versus side plane? That sort of thing, that's what I start with. Then later on as I'm doing the features, I'll
add the exact shape of the cheekbones, the exact shape over here, exact shape of chin. I don't start with that. I'm starting with simpler forms. Maybe I didn't make that forehead big enough. If I was doing a caricature, I'd really push
that up but, okay. Ok, I'll do it one more where I'm focused on showing
you guys about changing proportions to fit the type. That's Olivia Munn. And with her, look at those cheekbones. I feel like with how big those cheekbones
are, even though I just said that I don't usually include that. That just kind of has to be a part of that
jaw shape. The side plane and the jaw goes up towards
the sides. So, okay, let me start here, I'm gonna start
with that circle, so, around here, the side plane is not looking up or down. Again, all of these actually are kind of just
straight on angles. Celebrity photos, you know, the camera man's usually, eye level with everybody's head. And her thirds don't look like they're really
that extreme deviation from the average. So, I'm just gonna do the average. I think I tend
to make the chin too low every time. I think I did that with Tom Hanks. Okay. So, there's my thirds, pretty much average. And I feel like, okay, I'm gonna have to angle
this out a little bit, center of the chin, from there, find kind of the width of the
chin and I connect it to the jaw in the back. And then, okay, so I'm gonna chop off, I think
I forgot to chop off the side here, because it is enough of a front angle where you're gonna
start seeing some of the ball chopped off, a little bit of a flat side of the head is
going through. That actually does change where the center
line goes. Make sure to do that before you place your
center line. But that doesn't change the jawline too much. Okay, now, usually what I would do is, I would do
this, we'll just kind of drop a line down to the chin and then that'd be kind of a decent
average. With her, the cheekbone really comes out. And so, I'm gonna do kind of more like this. Boom, bring that over to the other side. Again, so, normally I'd go from here and kind
of just draw a straight line to the chin, can't do that with her because that's not
where the side plane is. Side plane is all the way over here, and then
from there, I can kind of connect it to the forehead. I feel like that really, really skinny neck
is important to show her type. Another rhythm I like to use and actually
the one I used in my very first video is from the ear, from the top of ear, following that
across the ridge of the cheekbone and then turning that down this way. All right, cool. So, we got three different proportion types. And that's how I would modify Loomis' head. You can see they're surprisingly similar. You just need to shift things slightly and
it appears very different. So, slight modifications to Loomis head gives
you a very different character types. So, let's see, what did I promised I would
do for you guys, oh, baby, okay. So cute. So, I promised you guys I would do a baby. Here's my son. So, Loomis has a pretty big...not a big side. But he's got a section in one of his books
showing all the different proportions of different ages, an older person, an average person,
kind of a teenage, then a child, and then a baby. And the head does change as we grow, right? And the proportions change quite a bit, you
can see obviously, big forehead, then kind of very small features, and overall wire the
jaws much smaller than the cranium. So, let's see here, I'll try to keep this
quick. And this is quick sketch. I don't wanna do a little portrait land right
now, these are quick sketch drawings. I don't have too much experience applying
the Loomis head to babies. I haven't practiced that very much but this
should be fun. As you can imagine, we didn't have too many
babies as our life models and class and my son's only one. So, I haven't had too much practice with him
yet. All right. I think I'm gonna start with just a ball,
same way, chop off the side, and then the jaw just needs to be much shorter. Like typically, I'd maybe put the chin down
here, on a baby, I think it'd be like, maybe here. The whole thing just needs to be shorter,
wider. And then instead of putting this brow ridge
over here, I have to drop everything. So, the brow ridge would be like, right there. And I think...he's looking up a little bit
actually. Curve [SP] that up this way. And I don't know, you're probably wouldn't
go there, like, kind of just dropping everything. Looks like the bottom of the nose is pretty
much halfway between brow and chin, so put the nose here, really squared off. I feel like I have to add some form, have
to add a little of a volume up here. And he's smiling, so his cheeks are coming
out more, that's part of the expression. If he had a neutral pose, I don't think it'd
be coming out that much. But hey, expressions...we got to draw expressions
to, right? So, we can adjust the luminous head to fit
certain expressions too. So, this jaw comes out. Not the jaw, so this cheek comes, and I'm
gonna mirror it on the other side, like that. Chin over here, and then jaw's very round,
covered with a whole bunch of fat. I mean, obviously, it already looks like a
baby just by kind of changing those major things about the proportions. But I feel like actually knowing my son to,
he's definitely got, more in the back, more volume back here. Tiny neck, I don't even see it under there. I'm probably getting a little too carried
away with some of the details here. I can't help it but it's my son. All right, I'm not gonna draw the features. I have to, I'm gonna force myself to stop
right there. But basically, there you go. Okay, next, I'm going to do an open-jaw but
I don't have any photos that I need quickly. So, I'm actually just gonna take a selfie,
jaw open. Not good enough. Okay, let's draw that. Here we go. Okay. So I'm gonna draw that and transfer that to
the side of the screen. All right. So, I'm gonna start with that same thing,
again, you got the cranial mass. So, the cranium doesn't change, when you open
your jaw, right? The round circular part of the skull stays
the same. It's just the job that moves. So, that circle, the initial step is the same. And then the side plane of that circle stays
the same. And looks like it manages to little less than
halfway, something like that. And then from top of the ear to the brows,
looks like it's an upward angle, like this, and then the same thing to the nose. Now, this is where it changes since the jaw
opened. Obviously, the bottom is going to be longer,
right? You got that whole length now between the
teeth that you have to add. When the jaws closed, the shortest distance
is about a third of the face. When it opens it just, you just making that
bottom third longer. But also the chin goes in a little bit because
it's not just lowering, it's rotating from the joint back here under the ear. So, if you look at actually the angle from
the cheekbone to the chin, it's like all the way over here. I wanna make sure I make this long enough. Now, as the jaw opens, this whole bottom plane
compresses against the neck, right? You got all this skin and then kind of gets
pushed out. So, this bottom plan just kind of around right
here. And I'm cutting through the cheekbone actually,
I'm not including it. There would be an extra mass over here, which
I would add in once I start putting the features. As far as the center line, I wanna to keep
it going and then right here, you have to start bringing it in. And obviously, that looks a little weird without
showing that the mouth is actually open. It just looks really skewed. So, I'm just gonna do a quick shape indication
to show that this mouth is open. All right, good enough. I just wanted to share with you guys this
idea that the jaw isn't always gonna be closed. Even if you don't see a whole like, lips open,
sometimes the jaw can be a little bit wider like, you know, watch my chin, right. I can open my jaw and lengthen that bottom
third without opening my lips. So, that's something that you might wanna
consider as you're looking at the model or is the jaw slightly relaxed? Or are the teeth actually touching? There you go. Not the most flattering image of myself but
gets the point across. If you guys have any more questions regarding
Loomis method, go ahead and leave a comment below. Tomorrow for the 12 Days of Proko, Quicksketch
Edition. I'm gonna be showing you a more intuitive
Loomis head approach. See you then.
Wait this is extremely helpful! Thanks for the share.
Me too! I was coincidentally practicing his first head tutorials, with these series explaining it further I was able to get a satisfying sketch for the first time!