Free Loomis Head tool — build accurate heads from any angle, in your browser.

Yes. The Loomis Head overlay — and all 82 overlays in Grid Maker Pro — are free with no signup, no watermark, and no upload limit. Image processing happens locally in your browser; your reference photo never leaves your device.

The Loomis Method is a head-construction system devised by American illustrator Andrew Loomis (1892–1959) in his 1956 book Drawing the Head and Hands. You start with a sphere for the cranium, carve a flat side-plane out of it, and use horizontal ear-line and brow-line guides to place the features in correct three-dimensional space. It is the most widely taught approach for constructing a head from any angle in academic and online art education today — see the 13-step Loomis walkthrough for the full method.

Yes. The Loomis overlay can be dragged, rotated, scaled, and flipped horizontally. Use the rotation handle to match three-quarter angles, and the flip control for opposite-side views. Front, three-quarter, and profile presets are also available from the overlay's preset row.

All three are head-construction systems, but they emphasize different priorities. Loomis builds from a sphere and side-plane and is geometric and easy for beginners. The Reilly Method (Frank J. Reilly) lays a system of rhythmic curves over the head for advanced figurative painters. The Asaro Head (Asaro Brothers) reduces the head to flat planes for understanding light. Grid Maker Pro includes overlays for all three under Artist Guides — see our Bargue / Reilly / Loomis / Asaro comparison.

Yes. Export the canvas as a PDF at standard paper sizes (US Letter, A4, A3, 11×14, 16×20) with the Loomis construction baked in. The export keeps line crispness at 4× resolution so it stays sharp on print.

Yes. Grid Maker Pro runs in any modern browser including Safari and Chrome on iPad. A common workflow is to set up the Loomis overlay on a reference in Grid Maker Pro, screenshot the canvas (Power + Volume Up on iPad), then import it as a reference layer in Procreate, Affinity Photo, Photoshop, or Krita.

Loomis's instructional books are out of copyright in many jurisdictions due to non-renewal under the 1909 U.S. Copyright Act. Internet Archive hosts scanned copies of Drawing the Head and Hands and Figure Drawing for All It's Worth that are widely cited in art-school curricula. Grid Maker Pro's Loomis overlay is built from the construction principles described in those public-domain works.

No. There is nothing to install. Open the page, pick an overlay, drag in a reference, and start drawing. There is no account to create. The site works on Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, and Brave on Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, iOS, and Android.

The default Loomis overlay uses the canonical proportions from Loomis's 1956 plates: sphere diameter, brow-to-chin distance, ear-line and brow-line placement, and five-eye-width facial division. These are guidelines, not absolutes — real heads vary, and the overlay is meant as a scaffolding the artist refines from observation, not a tracing template.

In short: draw the cranium sphere, carve the flat side-plane, set the centerline, place the brow-line and ear-line, drop the chin a third of the sphere's diameter below it, sweep the jaw plane to the chin, then divide brow-to-chin into thirds for nose base and mouth, place the eyes five eye-widths across, and add the ears and neck. This page sets out the full thirteen-step sequence in its HowTo schema; for an illustrated walkthrough of each step see the Loomis method step-by-step guide.

Yes. The Loomis method for beginners works because it is geometric before it is anatomical — you can place a sphere and a side-plane long before you know the skull. For a Loomis method front view, drop the centerline straight down the middle of the sphere, keep the ear-line and brow-line level, and rely on the five-eye-width division across the brow-line; the front-view preset in the tool sets these construction lines for you so you can build heads from any angle once the level view feels familiar.