Alternative to Loomis method of drawing a head – Triangulation technique

Started 4 years ago 14624

In my previous post, I tested out the Loomis method of drawing heads for an accurate representation of drawing real-life portraits. I concluded that there were deficiencies in this approach where the accuracy could not be reproduced relative to the eyes, ears, nose and mouth. However, the approach is perfectly fine for people who wanted to draw caricatures such as anime, cartoon etc.

You will find a recent article on this approach of drawing faces and portraits where I expand the triangulation approach by continuing to do best fits for faces. However, I encourage you to read this article first so you can grasp the fundamentals of the triangulation method for drawing portraits.

To see a previous post on the Loomis method of drawing heads, please go to the link below.

Loomis method head drawing for real portraits.

In this approach, I show a new technique since I was unable to find any equivalent on the internet and I call this approach, the triangulation method of drawing faces. Note that this technique is good for drawing portraiture faces that is facing head on and to some extent the face moved slightly to the left and right. The loomis method is good for drawing the 3D shapes of the head and as mentioned good for 3D renditions of the head. Since many of us like to draw live portraits, I feel that this method warrants some investigation and further research.

face triangulation — Fig. 1 Six random faces taken from the internet to outline the triangulation method of approach for drawing faces.

In Fig. 1 I have taken six random faces and proportioned them to each of the squares to show this new triangulation approach.

In Fig. 2 I have drawn triangles as can be seen from eyes, cranium, lips and nose.

faces triangulation — Fig. 2 Triangles drawn for each of the faces.

What I found striking from doing these experiments was how close the triangles were to each other. I went further ahead and overlapped these triangles in the Gimp editor to see the deviation. Fig. 3 shows the deviations.

face triangulation deviation — Fig. 3 deviation of all 6 triangles from each other having adjusted for height and parallax errors.

I then continued to draw faces using this technique and the result was a good match to proportions of the face. Perhaps you would like to give this a try and let me know what you think.

Here is a video of one of the drawings I did using this technique with the Paintology app.

https://youtu.be/mQD24ms8zjo

For further reading on the method of triangular technique for drawing portraits, please visit the article below.

Further study of the triangulation technique of drawing a face | Part 1 – female faces

Download the free Paintology drawing app from the Google play store to practice drawing portraits.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.paintology.lite