The most-published head-drawing method of the twentieth century. Andrew Loomis's 1956 ball-and-plane construction — a sphere with one side cut flat, plus a tapered jaw block — gives a usable head in minutes and a working professional vocabulary for life. Continuously in print since publication. Taught at every serious atelier as the first-year on-ramp. The structure that Reilly's rhythms flow over and Asaro's planes attach to. If you draw one head in your life, this is how you start.
On a frontal portrait the side plane is hidden behind the ball — only the front of the sphere is visible. The eye-line sits at the equator of the ball, the jaw attaches at the lower edge, and the proportional divisions space evenly between brow and chin.
The Loomis Head overlay draws three primitives: a circle representing the cranial sphere, an ellipse showing the cut where the side plane intersects (which appears as a flat oval when seen at three-quarter angle and disappears at full frontal), and a curved line for the jaw block extending from the lower edge of the sphere down to the chin. A vertical central axis runs through the full head. Three horizontal markers identify the brow-line, nose-base, and mouth-line at canonical proportional positions.
The overlay rotates with head tilt. The vertical axis tilts off-vertical as the head tilts; the equator (eye-line) shifts up or down as the head angles; the side plane cut becomes more or less visible as the head turns. This is the entire utility of the construction: it gives a small, consistent set of construction lines and geometric primitives — the cranial ball, the side plane, the jaw block — that you can rotate in your head to match any pose, whether you draw the Loomis head from the front or at a 3/4 view.
The Loomis head method has no equations. Its mathematical content is a set of canonical head proportions — construction lines that locate features on the constructed primitive. This is how to draw a head using the Loomis method, start to finish:
step 1 — draw the cranial sphere
step 2 — tilt the central vertical axis (head tilt)
step 3 — draw the equator (eye-line)
step 4 — cut the side plane (one side of the sphere)
step 5 — attach the tapered jaw block
step 6 — mark proportional divisions (brow, nose, mouth)
step 7 — add features and refine
The proportional canon embedded in step six is the École des Beaux-Arts measurement tradition that Loomis inherited via Bridgman.2 Adult head heights divide into approximately seven and a half body-units; within the head itself, eye-line at the vertical midpoint of the full head (counting the cranium); from eye-line to chin equals half the head's height; that half divides into three (brow to nose, nose to mouth, mouth to chin). These ratios produce the canonically proportioned adult head. Child heads use modified ratios — larger cranium relative to face, eye-line below the midpoint — that Loomis documents in chapters 3 and 4 of Drawing the Head and Hands.1
1892–1929 — Loomis's training. William Andrew Loomis was born in Syracuse, New York in 1892. He trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League of New York, where he overlapped with the Bridgman teaching tradition.3 Bridgman's Constructive Anatomy (1920) was the dominant instructional text of the period and is the direct ancestor of Loomis's later construction approach.2
1930s–1950s — illustration career. Loomis built a successful commercial illustration career producing work for Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, Ladies' Home Journal, and major advertising clients. His pin-up paintings during this period remain in active commerce.3 The instructional books are written alongside ongoing commercial work, not as a retirement project.
1939 — Fun with a Pencil. Loomis's first instructional book, published by Viking Press, sold widely and established the format he would use across the remaining books: clear text, copious instructional drawings, exercises the student can attempt without supervision.4
1943 — Figure Drawing for All It's Worth. The second book extends the construction approach to the full figure. The eight-head canonical proportion (sometimes seven-and-a-half) is codified here.5
1956 — Drawing the Head and Hands. The fifth and final major book, published by Viking Press, introduces the ball-and-plane head construction in its definitive form.1 The book contains roughly 150 instructional drawings and remains continuously in print to this day. Titan Books's 2011 reprint (ISBN 978-0-85768-097-6) is the standard contemporary edition.
1959 — Loomis dies. Andrew Loomis dies in Chicago in May 1959 at age 66. His widow Ethel manages his estate and the books continue to sell steadily through Viking and successor publishers.
1970s–2000s — quiet rights period. Loomis's books move out of mainstream bookstore distribution as the modernist break makes academic instructional books unfashionable. Photocopied PDFs circulate on the early internet as the books become hard to find.
2011 — Titan reprints. Titan Books in London negotiates with the Loomis estate and reprints the major books in cleaned-up hardcover editions. Drawing the Head and Hands, Figure Drawing for All It's Worth, and Successful Drawing become widely available again. The reprints coincide with the contemporary atelier revival and a renewed interest in classical-realist drawing instruction.1
"Loomis invented the ball-and-plane head." He synthesised rather than invented. Bridgman's Constructive Anatomy (1920) contains an essentially equivalent head construction in less codified form; Bridgman's source was the École des Beaux-Arts tradition he absorbed in his Paris training. Loomis's contribution was the pedagogical clarity that turned the existing technique into something a self-taught student could learn from a book without an instructor.
"The Loomis proportions are universal across all human heads." They are the canonical adult-Western-male canon and apply approximately to most heads of similar demographic. Child heads use larger cranium-to-face ratios; adult female heads tend slightly toward smaller jaw; many non-Western populations show systematic deviations. The Loomis proportions are a starting point, not an absolute law.
| If you want to... | Use Loomis | Don't use it for... | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Learn head drawing for the first time | The simplest and most-published construction; usable head in a single session | If you already have a hundred heads of experience (move to Reilly or Asaro) | Beginner |
| Quick gesture sketches from a moving model | Ball-and-plane builds fast — usable construction in under a minute | Long-pose painting where Reilly's rhythms become available | Beginner |
| Lay in a head for any other overlay to attach to | Every contemporary atelier workflow puts Loomis underneath — Asaro, Reilly, Bargue all sit on top | Highly stylised or non-realistic character work where realistic proportions distort | Beginner |
| Teach beginners head construction | The book's clarity makes self-directed study possible without an instructor | Advanced atelier curriculum where Bargue cast drawing is the appropriate level | Beginner |
| Construct a head from imagination at any angle | Geometric primitives rotate in the mind's eye — Loomis is the canonical "from imagination" method | Photo-reference workflows where direct observation replaces construction | Intermediate |
Six contexts where the Loomis ball-and-plane construction is the foundation teaching.
The original publication. Continuously in print for nearly seventy years across multiple editions. Roughly 150 instructional drawings demonstrating the ball-and-plane at every head angle, light condition, age, and expression.
The most-watched online drawing curriculum of the 2010s — Proko's head series uses the Loomis construction as its foundation. Stan Prokopenko studied at Watts Atelier; the Loomis underpinning is explicit throughout.
Watts Atelier's foundation-year drawing curriculum begins with the Loomis ball-and-plane construction. Students draw a hundred Loomis heads from imagination before any reference work.
NMA's beginner figure-drawing track is built around the Loomis books, with video instructors walking through each construction step alongside the book pages. The widest-distributed online Loomis curriculum.
CDA's foundation drawing programme — taught by industry concept artists from Disney, ILM, and Marvel — uses Loomis as the standard initial head construction. Common entry point for entertainment-industry careers.
Aaron Blaise's "Creature Art Teacher" video series teaches animal and character head drawing using Loomis as the structural foundation that the animation-specific stylisation sits on top of.
When the head tilts back or forward, the ball's silhouette is still a circle, but its equator (the eye-line) tilts off horizontal. Beginners draw the ball as a circle and then draw the eye-line horizontally — which corresponds to a non-tilted head. The result is a head that reads as frontal even though the artist intended a tilted pose.
At three-quarter angle, the side plane is the most visible feature of the head — it's the flat plane that catches sidelong light most cleanly. Beginners draw the ball but forget to cut the side plane, producing heads that read as spherical fish-balloons rather than as anatomically grounded.
Some students draw Loomis heads for years without progressing to the painterly refinement that finished portrait work requires. The construction is meant to be invisible in the finished painting — a planning tool, not the painting itself. Students who get stuck on Loomis heads as finished output limit their growth.
Loomis's proportional canon is the average adult Western head. Children, infants, elderly subjects, and non-Western populations show systematic deviations from these averages. Students who apply the canon rigidly produce heads that look "right" but lack the individual variation that distinguishes one face from another.
Loomis is the standard underdrawing for any portrait painting from imagination or from photo reference. Block in the ball-and-plane in pencil or thin oil, then build up paint layers on top. The construction stays invisible in the finished work but holds the painting's structural integrity. Most working portrait commissioners use Loomis underneath even when the finished surface is fully painterly.
Start here. Buy Drawing the Head and Hands (Titan reprint), work through the first three chapters, draw a hundred Loomis heads from imagination, then start applying it to photo references. After roughly a year of consistent practice the construction becomes automatic and you can move on to layered methods (Asaro for lighting, Reilly for refinement). No other beginner head method is as widely supported or as well documented.
The Loomis construction is the canonical industry method for character heads built from imagination at any angle. Disney's Aaron Blaise, Pixar's Glenn Vilppu (whose curriculum predates the Asaro release), and most major studio character design pipelines use ball-and-plane Loomis as the structural foundation that style and lighting attach to. The geometric primitives rotate easily in mental space, which makes them ideal for the rotation work that animation requires.
Loomis remains the easiest-to-teach head construction. The book itself does most of the teaching — students can self-direct through the chapters with minimal instructor involvement. Use it as the foundation for any beginner curriculum, then graduate students to atelier-style Bargue or Reilly work after they have internalised the basic construction.
"I draw a Loomis head every morning. Twenty years and I still draw one every morning. The construction stays invisible in the work but the daily repetition is what keeps the construction available when I need it during a commission."
Stan Prokopenko, Proko head drawing course (2014–present)6
Illustrative composites of how the tool gets used in practice — not quotes from named individuals.
I draw a Loomis head every morning before I touch a commission. Twenty years and I still draw one every morning. The repetition is what keeps the construction available when I need it.
When I teach beginners I hand them Drawing the Head and Hands and say "do the first three chapters in two weeks, then come back." The book teaches itself. My job is to verify they actually did the work.
For concept work I rotate Loomis primitives mentally before I touch the canvas. The geometric shapes are easier to spin in your head than a photographic likeness.
Drop a portrait reference. The Loomis ball-and-plane overlay applies in one click. Free, in your browser.
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