How to Practice Drawing a Portrait | Understanding the Loomis Method

foreign hey guys welcome back to another one my name is Braden and I'm an artist so how to practice a portrait this is one of those things where there are multiple avenues that you can use but I will teach you how to effectively utilize the Loomis method in tandem with the asaro method and we'll fuse both of those approaches together and I'll show you how you can very easily practice portraiture so what does that look like it looks something like this we're going to start off and we're going to draw a circle from there I'm going to show you how you can identify the side plane once the side plane is drawn in I'm going to show you how you can identify the horizontal axis then punch in your brow line your hairline and then be able to draw in the bottom of the nose once you have the basic portions drawn in then it's just a simple shape game so I'm going to be explaining the difference between two-dimensional shape and three-dimensional form I'm going to be explaining the difference between the overhand grip and the three point grip all the while we're going to be building out this portrait based off of its reference photo I'm going to be touching a little bit on the value scale and we're just going to have fun that's the big thing let's have some fun let's realize that there is no such thing as Perfection there's only the practice of our craft so that's the short and the sweet of it before we dive into it make sure that you like subscribe and maybe even turn on all those notifications so that you never miss when my latest and greatest videos hit the channel here at Master creations all right let's rock and roll [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you so the first thing that we want to do is we want to grip our pencil with the overhand grip we want to just very lightly start to draw a circle the circle doesn't have to be perfect so long as it's the same width and the same height so it's somewhat symmetrical and then once we have that established we're going to look at the reference photo and the side plane is something like this right and now we're going to look to see which way the eyes are we're going to establish our horizontal axis on our side plane and then what I like to do is I like to insert a little plane here to identify the temple right that effectively elongates the front of the face and then we're going to pull over our brow line and then our hairline is somewhere right here right and then look toward the bottom of the side oval is and then you can pull that over and that is roughly where the bottom of the nose will be okay and then we're going to pull this down and what this is is this is the vertical axis of the head okay so this shows us the orientation in space of how the head actually sits on the paper and then what you can do is from the center of that oval draw in your basic planes of the ear just like this okay and just go nice and light that's the big thing is you know do short short little light poles that way if you need to make an adjustment like let's say maybe your proportions are off slightly you can actually go in and you can erase and start anew okay so now that we have a pretty good idea of where the nose ends what I want to start doing is I want to draw out the nose and how you can do that is just like this here just like this we're doing short short little poles and it's important to understand that at this point in the drawing I'm not trying to draw it exactly as it appears in the reference photo but rather I'm trying to get a good sense of the basic two-dimensional shape which you can start to bring out in a drawing by identifying the planes of the face now the method used to begin to draw this portrait is of course the Loomis method however if you are curious and want to study planes more in depth for the facial features I would highly recommend studying John asaro a sorrow came out with a head bottle back in the mid 70s that was actually more or less designed specifically for painters of the time but as with all visual artists because we're all governed by the same principles it works for pretty much any Visual Arts regardless of medium so you know check that out and then here as you can see what we can start to do is we can start to draw in the planes of the nose so we're using planes with planes to start to bring out that sense of form you know that illusion of that third dimension because as I've said you're drawing regardless of how picture perfect it is is only going to exist ever in two-dimensional space so the trick and what separates a mediocre artist from a really good artist in the visual sense is your ability to sell a viewer's eye on the subconscious idea that there is form that there is volume even though technically it's the illusion of it it's not physically there in three-dimensional space however it does look like it so let's go nice and slow and one of the big things that you can start to do is once you have the ear roughly in place right on the side plane and then you have the nose you can start to use those features as reference points for the rest of the drawing and one of the things that I really want to drill home with you in this tutorial and I want to show you is that those initial lines that you draw in such as the hair here they don't have to be perfect because what you're actually doing as the artist is you are trying to get a sense of proportion and exactly where those features like the hair you know the ears the nose the eyes actually live and so give yourself some Grace don't think that when you go in onto the paper initially that it has to be perfect because it doesn't that's one of the biggest mistakes that you can make as a young artist is thinking that you have to be perfect from the get-go you don't none of us are okay but you can always try to make it better and that's what life is all about not just drawing now here notice I'm just going in and I've switched from the overhand method to What's called the three point method or tri-grip they're both the same thing the three-point grip is how they teach it or write and lots of artists actually use the three-point grip to draw as well there's nothing wrong with that however you do gain more control and you are forced to use a lighter pressure control if you draw with the overhand grip either one will do there's no rule saying that it has to be this way and it has to be that way it's based entirely on you what you have as an artist is you have an entire Shelf full of different methods and techniques that are available and that have been handed down from other artists over the centuries and it's really up to you to figure out which one works for your own art but what I like to do here is I'm just going in and just using a very light pressure control because I can always go back through and erase if I need to but I find that if I just take it slow if I focus on one feature at a time I can start to really establish within reason a decent proportion for my sketch just like here I'm just going to take my kneaded Eraser and I'm just going to kind of bring this jaw bone down a little bit and see I have the planes of the nose here but now what I want to do is I want to start adding a little bit more character to this nose so what I'm going to do is I'm going to punch in the nostril noses regardless of the reference that you use always look a little weird you know until you punch in that nostril and then there's like ah there it is that's exactly what I want right but we're just going to build this up here and that's the biggest thing with lines now with every single tutorial what I try to do is I try to go over the basic definitions of what lines are how to use them the different types of lines that are available to you in drawing because a line on its own is essentially a moving dot right you create a DOT and then you push or you pull that dot across the paper and that forms a line right that's what we're doing here now these initial lines that we've drawn these are what they call contour lines and what those are is those are lines that show you where an object ends okay like the boundaries and by themselves they only convey an object's basic two-dimensional shape they really don't have much to do with selling that third dimension right and then what I'm doing here actually notice how these lines are getting a little bit thicker what I'm doing is I'm beefing up the lines quality well what is line quality line quality is the thickness or the thinness of a specific line and so when you vary a lines quality you can start to bring out form you can start to bring out the illusion of that their Dimension now with lines that tend to have a thicker quality they also tend to have a darker line weight now a line weight in line quality are very similar to each other but they are different and I want to make sure that you understand what the difference is line weight is the strength of a line or how light or dark it appears on the paper so technically the darker the line the heavier the weight the lighter the line the lighter the wave right now what I'm doing here is I'm just starting to punch in kind of the planes of the cheek right so you have cheekbone and then the cheekbone goes to the corner of the mouth when it comes to planes and this is why it's so important to study the asaro method alongside the Loomis method is because once you have your Loomis head drawn in and you start to punch in the features of the face the planes the actual planes of the face are going to be Paramount okay because that is how you are really going to be able to start to carve out the face that you're drawing but here what I'm doing is I'm just right above the eye socket I'm starting to draw in the eyebrow okay and more or less what I'm going for here is I'm going for just the shape of the eyebrow there are lots of artists out there that don't like to draw eyebrows like this in fact they won't draw the eyebrows at all and it'll be one of the last things that they draw in but for the sake of proportion I like to lightly sketch in the basic shape of the eyebrow no matter what it looks like okay because once that eyebrow is drawn in that can help me establish the corner of the eye see this so from there to about here I'm going to use a reference point mark it there we go so roughly I've identified the left side and the right side of the eye and then I can start to kind of go up like this and what this is is I'm drawing in the upper eyelid [Music] and then given the nature of the angle because she's looking very hard to her right we're just going to pull down like this right something like this and then the bottom of the eye kinda it's not straight across it kind of comes down right down like this and then it kind of kind of Curves up slightly I will say when it comes to eyes less is more with everything that you draw from your basic shape to when you start to build up those line qualities and weights when you start to shade and hatch and cross hatch and bring out those lower values always a light hand always a light hand and then of course if there's some place in the drawing where you really want to bring out that quality you want to darken up that line weight you can go in and use a slightly heavier pressure control like what I just did for the eyelid and then there's a little bit of a of a shadow here underneath this right and then what I'm doing here is I'm just hatching this eye socket most of the time regardless of orientation of the head nine times out of ten your light source is going to be from the top all right that's just the nature of portraits whether it's a chandelier giving off light you know they're outside and it's the Sun typically light's going to be from the top and because of that a lot of times your lower values or the light is not casting or casting as much it's going to be in the eye sockets so if you do any decent amount of hatching cross hatching shading right it's going to be in and around the eyes it's going to be on the bottom plane of the nose it's going to be under the lower lip and then of course under the Jawbone and the Very tippy top of the throne okay those are pretty much where your main low values will live on most portraits not all not all but but most and then if I'm looking at it all right we have a lower value immediately under the eye here so I kind of want to convey that and if you're drawing along with me with a mechanical pencil one of the things that you can use I'm not going to do it in this tutorial but one of the things that you can do if you don't like the graininess or that grittiness of the charcoal is you can go in with a smudger and you can start to very lightly blend and what will happen is you'll start to bring out gradation and you'll blend those values across your mid-tones and it'll just make the drawing look a lot smoother now for the purposes of this tutorial this is just a sketch okay I'm going to actually be coming out with a lot more of these where I'm just going to be sketching different things out of my Sketchbook and then bringing you guys along for the creative process so that I can explain how I think the rules that I use when I'm approaching different sketches the biggest thing is don't overthink the rules so much as feel the rules right feel the approach understand why we do it the way that we do it because there is rhyme and there is reason but definitely don't think of it in a rigid sense see what I'm doing here is I'm just going through with my kneaded Eraser and I'm trying to retrieve the high values and and kind of do away with that Circle that I first Drew for my Loomis head because we don't really need it at this point anymore we've for the most part have established the face and now we can start to focus on other aspects of the drawing I'm just going to bring this up something like that and if you push or pull your line a little bit too much don't worry about that that's why they invented erasers just go in and erase it you know and then right here I'm going to start to kind of beef this up I'm gonna pull this and lift this away from the eye and then we're going to lower the value why not I'm not going to get too intense with the details on this one because like I said before it's just a simple sketch then here what I'm going to do I'm just going to kind of Define this now I kind of got off track there's there's two more line definitions that I want to discuss with you in this tutorial um so what I'm doing here is you know I'm beefing up this line this is what's known as a defined line so a defined line is when you continue a line without any break and typically those lines will have a mid to heavy line way right they're just they're solid just all the way across very solid now the opposite of that is kind of like what I was doing around you know the bottom of the eye and the top of the eye those were basically implied lines now and implied lines when you continue a line after a small break or you could think of it like if you've noticed some of my other tutorials where I use the three layered method where I layer values to form a line with a very light line wave if that's confusing think of it like this an implied line is a contrast in value so if you have a super super low dark value right immediately next to a super super light high value that contrast that line if you will between the contrast of where it goes dark to light that is an implied line that's the best way that I can think to describe it [Music] but now we're pretty much at the point in this drawing where we want to start to bring out the underlying form now the trick to underline form is that obviously light pressure control like I mentioned before but you want to pull or push your pencil across the paper in the direction that the face is Flowing okay it's going to be different depending on your perception of your reference but always think when you look at a reference photo there is an underlying form there right and so if you start to pull up from the chin let's say right you want to pull up and over up and over because the direction of your hatching and even your cross hatching that will convey a certain sense of form so I'm going to pull like this I'm going to kind of pull up I'm going to pull over and up over and up on this lip kind of put an edge in it and you can blend it just like I'm doing here let's see that see how just I I barely started to lower the value and it completely changed what that upper lip looks like okay now hatching especially with underlying form it's a little bit difficult because it is so subtle but with enough practice you know and the habituation of your efforts you will get better okay this is the hard part you know it's those those subtle little little techniques little hatches on paper that really make the biggest difference here this is pretty pretty low in value but I actually kind of want to establish this this jawline a little bit more because it kind of comes out something like that but notice I mean this is the third time that I've adjusted that jaw right I was it was a little too skinny brought it down and then need a little bit more form so I brought it down you can do that too I like to call it making adjustments there's no such thing as a mistake in drawing you just make an adjustment and you do what needs to be done and you'll think yourself for it but notice notice the direction that I'm pulling see this like if you look at the reference photo you can see the shadow that I'm trying to convey you can see that direction is everything direction is absolutely everything and basically what we want is we just want to build up the form so notice the direction that I'm pulling my pencil here with my three-point grip you can do long strokes or you can do shorter Strokes you can hatch which is where you pull just one way and over and over again or you can start to cross hatch which is basically where you pull one away and then you pull the opposite way over the top of the direction that you just pulled and what that does is that effectively lowers the value right makes it darker but now see this here we had the basic shape of the ear and this is where we can start to go in around those shapes off and start to actually bring out the specific character of the references here now this is one of those things where you don't have to get super carried away with details like I actually don't like this right here so I'm just going to erase it I'm going to make what do we call it an adjustment that's right and we'll just go from there so much of the time artists get hung up on the fact that they didn't nail their proportions from the start and that's no real way to look at drawing much of anything in my opinion you always want to give yourself Grace and allow yourself the ability to Pivot to make adjustments to understand that okay that doesn't look right I didn't do that maybe the way that I would want to so like this right here I don't like any of this so what am I going to do I'm going to erase it okay I'm going to erase it I'm going to start a new I'm going to adjust art is a lot like life when you think of it that way how many times have you gone into something that you've never done before and nailed it from the get-go very rarely right diamonds are forged under tremendous pressure so if you think of life like that and if you think about your drawing in that same regard what you'll find is that it's okay and that's how we grow all right we grow by understanding our mistakes don't run from them simply embrace them like this ear life can be as simple or as complex as you make it but it's nice and light here and even at this point in the ear I'm just using a very light pressure control and did you notice how easy it was for me to use my kneaded Eraser and erase that initial ear pretty easy huh and the reason why was because I use a light pressure control I can't I can't stress that enough I know I probably sound like a broken record but having and using a light pressure control is Paramount especially with sketching and using this type of technique now right here we look at the reference photo you see that lower value that that shadow that's being cast from her Jawbone we can start to to implement that and I'm just going to pull up like this right it's nice and light pull up pull up pull up pull up pull up One Direction One Direction and like I was saying earlier if you want to go in with a smudger and you want to start very lightly blending these strokes and giving the graphite a sense of gradation across the paper you can do that as well it's a preference thing you don't have to do that if you don't want to I find a lot of time when it comes to just simple sketches practice sketches as I like to call them you don't really have to worry too much about that unless of course working on shading is something that you want to hyper focus on it's always good to be skewed up in every aspect of drawing not just shape not just creating form not just detail not just shading but the whole package right that'll make you a more complete artist but like what I'm doing here is I'm just going to build up this hair I'm just going to pull these over I've switched from the three-point grip to the overhand grip notice right [Music] and the biggest difference that you'll find between overhand and three point as far as how you grip your pencil is there is no right or wrong way to use those grips because it depends entirely on you everybody's hand is slightly different our comfort level depending on what it is that we're drawing is different so because of that you want to feel your own hand I say like for example for me using the overhand method for the hair that was comfortable that's why I did it if it wasn't comfortable I probably would have stuck to the three-point grip right you just have to kind of fill that out for yourself oh yeah so pretty much I'm just going to go in here like I said this is just just practice and we're going to treat it as such right gotta lower this value here foreign 's going to pull these up that kind of gives that lip a little a better sense of form and that's just it now that you have the basic portrait right the basic shape of what it is that you want drawn out now you can really start to focus on the detail when you're first drawing a portrait it's all about proportion it's all about basic shape not volume not three-dimensional form none of that stuff so just be aware oh all right well I will say that if you enjoyed this step-by-step drawing tutorial then I know for a fact that you would love my skillshare channel I'll have a link in the description so that you can check that out also if you want to support me on patreon I would greatly appreciate it I hope that you had fun it was awesome drawing with you guys stay happy stay healthy and remember never stop trying

Channel: Messer Creations

Views: 8,427

Keywords: charcoal types and differences, how to draw, drawing tutorial, drawing lessons, how to sketch, messer creations, drawing tips, drawing class free, how to use charcoal pencils, charcoal pencil, graphite drawing, drawing setup, loomis method, loomis method drawing heads, how to use drawing pencils, loomis, loomis method portrait, loomis head, how to draw heads, how to draw a face, how to draw a head, loomis method tutorial, loomis method drawing, drawing heads

Id: mlISpZA_CN0

Length: 32min 22sec (1942 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 14 2023