The Complete Loomis Head Method — 13 Steps With a Live Tool

Why the Loomis Method endures (and when to use something else)

The Loomis Method has held its place at the centre of head-drawing instruction for nearly seventy years. Andrew Loomis published Drawing the Head and Hands in 1956 with Viking Press, eight years after his more famous Figure Drawing for All It's Worth (1943). Both books became standard issue at art schools across the United States and the United Kingdom in the post-war era, and remained widely cited even as fashion in art instruction moved through other systems. Today they are core reading at the Watts Atelier, New Masters Academy, Schoolism, and Proko, and they appear in syllabi at the Florence Academy of Art and the Pasadena Art Institute.

The reason is geometric. Loomis built the head from primitives — a sphere and a flat plane, the "ball and plane" head that gives the method its informal name — that a beginner can place after thirty seconds of practice. Most other classical systems begin with anatomy: the supraorbital ridge, the zygomatic arch, the mandible. Anatomy works, but it asks the student to recognise three-dimensional structures inside flesh before they can draw the surface. Loomis flipped that requirement. Place a sphere; carve a side-plane; align an ear-line; and you already have a usable scaffold the rest of the head hangs off.

The second reason is rotational invariance. A sphere looks the same from every angle. Once you can draw a sphere convincingly, you have already drawn the cranium of every head in your sketchbook. The side-plane and the jaw are what introduce direction; the sphere stays constant. This makes the Loomis Method scale to extreme angles — overhead, under-the-chin, three-quarter back — that systems built on a flat oval do not handle gracefully.

That said, the Loomis Method is not the right tool for every job:

• For finished portrait painting in the academic tradition, the Reilly Method (Frank J. Reilly, Art Students League) gives more painterly results. Reilly trades Loomis's geometric sphere for interlocking rhythm lines that read more naturally on the canvas. See the Reilly overlay.
• For light-and-shadow studies, the Asaro Head (a faceted plane breakdown) is more useful. Asaro tells you which planes face the light and which are in shadow; Loomis tells you where landmarks sit in three dimensions but says nothing about value.
• For atelier-style observational training, the Bargue plates (Charles Bargue, 1866–1871) train your eye through measured copying rather than construction. Bargue is slower and more disciplined; Loomis is faster and more flexible.

Most working illustrators eventually learn all four. They begin with Loomis because it is the easiest to internalise, then add Reilly for finished portraiture, Asaro for lighting, and Bargue when their eye for proportion needs sharpening. A side-by-side comparison of all four methods is available here.

The five terms you need before you start

Loomis's plates use a small vocabulary that this guide repeats throughout. Read these five definitions before the steps; they are the entire grammar of the method.

1. Cranium sphere. The perfect circle (in two dimensions) or sphere (in three dimensions) that represents the upper skull from the eyebrow upward. It does not include the jaw.
2. Side-plane. A flat plane carved out of the sphere on the side of the head, running from the temple down to the cheekbone. The side-plane gives the head its directionality — without it the cranium would look like a perfect sphere with features on it.
3. Ear-line. A horizontal line passing through the centre of the ear. In Loomis's plates this is the master horizontal — every other landmark is positioned relative to it.
4. Brow-line. A second horizontal line above the ear-line, where the brow-ridge crosses. The vertical distance from brow-line to ear-line is fixed and small; if you can lock both lines simultaneously, you have locked the head's tilt.
5. Centreline. The vertical axis running from the top of the cranium through the chin. The centreline curves on three-quarter views (because it follows the surface of a sphere) and goes vertical on perfect front view.

That is the entire vocabulary. Sphere, side-plane, ear-line, brow-line, centreline. Internalise those five terms and the rest of the method is mechanical.

front

3/4

profile

The 13-step construction

This sequence walks the front-view construction first because it is the simplest. Three-quarter and profile angles modify steps 4–9 only; everything else is identical. The procedure assumes you have a portrait reference open and the Loomis Head overlay running on top of it.

1. Open the Loomis Head overlay

   From Artist Guides in Grid Maker Pro, pick Loomis Head. The full construction — sphere, side-plane, brow-line, ear-line, jaw curve, centreline — appears on the canvas, set to the default front-view preset. You can show or hide individual landmarks from the overlay's control panel; for the first pass, leave everything on.

2. Drop in your reference photo

   Drag any portrait photo onto the canvas. Image processing is local — Grid Maker Pro never uploads your reference to a server. For a first attempt, choose a clean front-view portrait with even lighting; save extreme angles and dramatic light for later.

3. Match the sphere to the cranium

   Drag and scale the Loomis sphere so it covers the upper skull only. The sphere should sit on top of the head like a helmet, ending roughly at the brow-line. Beginners always make the sphere too small and have to compensate by enlarging the jaw — this is the single most common mistake. Err larger; trim later.

   Quick check: the bottom of the sphere should pass behind the ear, not in front of it. If your sphere stops at the eye, it is too small.

4. Align the ear-line

   Rotate the construction until the ear-line passes through the centre of the visible ear. Ignore everything else for this step — the ear-line is the master horizontal, and locking it is what stops the rest of the construction from drifting. On a tilted head, the ear-line will not be horizontal on the canvas; it will follow the head's tilt.

5. Lock the brow-line

   Confirm the brow-line crosses where the brow-ridge sits on the reference. The vertical distance from ear-line to brow-line is small but fixed; if both do not lock simultaneously, your sphere is not the right size. Scale the entire construction (not just the sphere) by 5% increments until both horizontals click into place.

   This is the moment the Loomis Method earns its keep. With ear-line and brow-line locked, the head's three-dimensional orientation is fixed. Everything that follows is bookkeeping.

6. Carve the side-plane

   The flat side-plane runs from the temple down to the cheekbone. On the overlay it appears as a curved boundary on the side of the sphere. Tilt the construction sideways so this boundary follows the cheekbone arc on the reference. For a perfect front view, the side-plane is symmetric and barely visible; for three-quarter views, one side-plane is fully visible and the other has rotated out of view.

   If the side-plane refuses to align with the cheekbone, your sphere position is off. Re-do step 3 before continuing.

7. Drop the chin

   From the centreline, extend a vertical equal to one third of the sphere's diameter to find the chin point. The Loomis overlay marks this drop automatically — it appears as a small dot below the sphere with a dashed line. The chin point is the most important landmark below the cranium because it anchors the entire jaw.

   If your chin point lands above or to the side of the actual chin in the reference, the overlay is mis-rotated, not mis-scaled. Return to step 4.

8. Place the brow, nose-base, and mouth-line

   Divide the front face from brow-line to chin into three equal parts. Each division is a horizontal landmark:

   • Top third: brow-line down to nose-base.
   • Middle third: nose-base down to mouth-line.
   • Bottom third: mouth-line down to chin.

   These thirds are an idealisation — real faces vary by ±10% — but they are accurate enough to construct a recognisable head before refinement.

9. Construct the jaw

   From the corner where the side-plane meets the cranium (the angle of the jaw), sweep a curve down to the chin point. The shape of this curve carries the entire feel of the face: a sharp angle reads masculine and athletic; a soft curve reads feminine or younger. The Loomis overlay gives you a default jaw curve you can edit by dragging two control points.

10. Place the eyes

    Five eye-widths fit across the brow-line at perfect front view: one eye-width on each side of the head, then five eye-widths for left-margin / left-eye / centre-gap / right-eye / right-margin. The eyes sit one eye-width apart with one eye-width on each side of the face.

    On three-quarter views, the back-side eye is foreshortened and may shrink to half an eye-width visually; the front-side eye is roughly its true size. The five-eye rule still applies if you measure along the surface of the sphere, not the canvas.

11. Place the nose, mouth, and ears

    Three quick placements:

    • Nose tip: sits on the nose-base line (the boundary between top and middle thirds).
    • Mouth: sits on the mouth-line. The corners of the mouth typically align with the inside edges of the pupils for relaxed expressions.
    • Ear: the top of the ear meets the brow-line; the bottom of the ear meets the nose-base line. The ear is therefore one third of the face tall, which is more than most beginners draw.

12. Block in the neck

    The neck is a tilted cylinder rising from the trapezius (the shoulder muscle). The front edge of the neck meets the underside of the jaw under the ear, not at the chin. Drawing the neck flush to the chin is a beginner error that makes the head look detached and floating; running the neck cylinder behind the jaw fixes it instantly.

    The cylinder also tilts forward slightly: a real human neck juts forward perhaps 10–15 degrees from the vertical of the spine. A perfectly vertical neck reads as stiff and unnatural.

13. Refine on a fresh layer

    Reduce the Loomis overlay opacity to 30% and refine the features on top. The construction is scaffolding — it is not the drawing. Expect the refined head to deviate from the construction by 5–15% in places; that deviation is where the individual face lives.

    Export the gridded reference as PDF (for paper transfer at A4, A3, US Letter, 11×14, or 16×20) or PNG (for digital tracing) at 4× resolution. The export keeps the Loomis lines crisp; the reference image is preserved at full quality.

Three-quarter and profile angles

Three-quarter view (turned roughly 30–45 degrees off-axis) is the most useful angle in figurative work because it conveys both the front and the side of the face simultaneously. Profile view (turned 90 degrees) is the simplest geometrically but the least flattering, which is why most portraits sit somewhere between front and three-quarter.

The Loomis Method handles these angles with three modifications to the front-view procedure:

1. Step 4 (ear-line): rotate the entire construction to match the head's turn. The ear-line still passes through the visible ear, but in three-quarter view only one ear is visible. The far ear is hidden behind the side-plane.
2. Step 6 (side-plane): in three-quarter view, the front-facing side-plane is fully visible and the rear side-plane is rotated out of view. Tilt the construction sideways so the visible side-plane runs from the visible temple down to the visible cheekbone.
3. Step 8 (face thirds): the centreline is no longer vertical — it curves around the surface of the sphere. The face thirds are still equal in three-dimensional space, but they appear unequal on the canvas because the bottom third is closer to the camera than the top third. The Loomis overlay handles this curvature automatically; do not try to correct it manually.

Profile view (90 degrees) is mechanically simpler. The sphere becomes a perfect circle on the canvas; the side-plane is fully visible as the entire front of the head; the ear-line and brow-line are short horizontal segments. The features (eye, nose, mouth) sit on the front edge of the side-plane in profile, not on the centreline. This catches some beginners — the eye in profile is on the silhouette, not in the middle of the face.

Tilted-up and tilted-down heads (the hardest)

Heads tilted up (looking at the camera from below) or down (looking down at the camera from above) are the hardest angles for most students. The Loomis sphere remains constant, but the ear-line and brow-line sweep into curves on the canvas because they wrap around the back of the sphere.

A head tilted up shows more of the underside of the jaw and less of the cranium. The chin point shifts above the centre of the sphere on the canvas; the ear-line bends downward; the eyes appear high on the face because more of the chin is visible. A head tilted down shows the top of the cranium, foreshortens the jaw, and pushes the chin point below the sphere. The ear-line bends upward; the eyes appear low.

The Loomis overlay's preset row includes tilt-up and tilt-down presets at 15-degree, 30-degree, and 45-degree increments. Use these as starting points rather than rotating the construction freehand — getting the ear-line curve right by hand is a five-hour exercise the presets bypass in seconds.

The most common mistake at extreme angles is failing to redraw the side-plane. As the head tilts up or down, the side-plane stays on the side, but its visible silhouette changes shape because you are seeing it from a different angle. Toggle the Asaro plane overlay on top of Loomis to see the side-plane as a flat polygon in space; this makes the rotation tractable.

Eight common mistakes and how to fix them

Across 316 reviews of the Loomis Head tool from working artists, the same eight mistakes appear repeatedly. Fixing them is mostly a matter of knowing they exist.

1. Sphere too small

The most frequent error. A small sphere forces an oversized jaw to compensate, which makes the head look horse-like. Fix: the sphere should reach down to the brow-line and the bottom of the sphere should pass behind the ear, not in front of it. If the ear sits below your sphere, scale the sphere up by 20% and re-place.

2. Side-plane too far forward

The side-plane belongs at the temple, not at the eye. Beginners often place the side-plane at the eye socket because that is where they perceive the head turning, but the actual three-dimensional plane is further back. Fix: drop a vertical from the temple in your reference; that vertical is the side-plane corner.

3. Ear-line and brow-line not parallel

The ear-line and brow-line must rotate together — they are both horizontal in three-dimensional space. If your ear-line is tilted but your brow-line is horizontal, the construction is broken. Fix: snap them together using the overlay's lock horizontals control.

4. Chin drop too long

A chin drop longer than one third of the sphere diameter produces a long, gaunt face. Fix: measure the sphere diameter on the canvas in pixels and divide by three; the chin point is exactly that distance below the bottom of the sphere on the centreline.

5. Eyes too high or too low

The eyes sit on the brow-line, not above it. Many beginners draw the eyes between the brow-ridge and the nose-base because that is where the iris sits in real photos. The eye socket is on the brow-line; the iris is slightly below. Fix: draw the eye sockets first, then place the iris within them.

6. Mouth too close to the nose

The mouth-line is two thirds of the way from brow to chin, not one half. Drawing the mouth at the halfway point shortens the chin and makes the face look infantile. Fix: always divide brow-to-chin into thirds before placing the mouth.

7. Ears too short

Real ears stretch from the brow-line to the nose-base — one full third of the face. Most beginners draw ears half this height. Fix: place the top and bottom of the ear before drawing the ear's outline.

8. Neck flush with the chin

The neck cylinder meets the jaw under the ear, not at the chin. A neck flush with the chin makes the head look detached and floating. Fix: sketch the jaw curve first, then draw the front edge of the neck from the underside of the jaw at the ear, sweeping down to the trapezius.

Female vs male proportions

The geometric construction is identical for female and male heads. The differences live in the proportions and the surface modelling.

Proportional differences

• Jaw drop: female heads tend to have a chin drop closer to 30% of the sphere diameter rather than the canonical 33%. The chin sits slightly higher.
• Chin width: female chins are typically 60% the width of the jaw at the angle. Male chins are typically 75–85%, producing a more rectangular jaw silhouette.
• Brow-ridge: male brow-ridges sit 10–15% further forward than female brow-ridges. This shows up as a sharper transition from forehead to nose-bridge in male profiles.
• Lip thickness: female lips average 10–20% thicker (top to bottom) at the mouth's centre. Both lips, not just the upper.

Surface differences

• Female faces tend to have a softer transition from sphere to side-plane. The corner where they meet is a smooth curve rather than a hard edge.
• Male faces show more pronounced bone landmarks: the brow-ridge, the zygomatic arch (cheekbone), the angle of the jaw.
• Female cheek transitions are more gradual; male cheek transitions show a clearer plane change from cheek to side of head.

None of this changes the underlying Loomis construction. Run the same 13 steps; modulate the proportions in step 7 (chin drop) and step 9 (jaw curve); soften the corners in refinement.

Stylised characters, anime, and caricature

Stylised work — anime, comics, animation, caricature — feels like it should not need a realistic construction underneath. In practice it needs construction more than realistic work does, because exaggeration without structure produces incoherent faces that fall apart from new angles.

The Loomis sphere is the foundation underneath every stylised head. Build the construction first, then exaggerate within it:

• Anime: enlarge the sphere relative to the jaw drop (the cranium is bigger; the jaw is smaller). Move the eyes lower on the face — they typically sit between the brow-line and the nose-base in anime, not on the brow-line.
• Western comics: retain Loomis proportions but exaggerate the side-plane corner — sharp male jaws, soft female jaws, both with more visible bone structure than realism allows.
• Caricature: identify which Loomis landmark is unusual on your subject (a wide brow, a long chin, a small sphere) and amplify it 30–50%. The construction tells you which landmarks to amplify.
• Animation: the rotational invariance of the sphere matters most here — characters that rotate through 360 degrees need their cranium to remain consistent across frames. Loomis's sphere is the easiest construction to rotate.

Loomis vs Reilly vs Asaro vs Bargue

The four most-cited classical head methods overlap in some places and diverge in others. Pick the one that matches your stage and goal.

For a deeper side-by-side breakdown including sample constructions, see Bargue vs Reilly vs Loomis vs Asaro: Choosing a Head Method.

Frequently asked questions