Learning to be a portrait artist

So I want to be a portrait artist. You might think it's awfully late in life for a 73 year old man to want to do this, but, hey! Why not?

To be a portrait artist, you need to have an intuitive understanding of the head. Now I've been to art classes and learned to draw the head by getting a plastic model of the skull, drawing it from various angles, studying the muscles that control the features, and doing studies of the face in the throes of various emotions. My portraits improved, but it wasn't enough.  I don't have an intuitive feel for the parts that create a person's identity.

To improve my skills I found YouTube videos that help:

• Proko's Quickly Draw Heads with Loomis Method, Part 1
• Proko's Draw Any Head Type with the Loomis Method, Part 2
• Proko's Intuitive Portrait Sketching with the Loomis Method, Part 3

After watching these I wanted to go to the source and was able to borrow Drawing the Head and Hands by Andrew Loomis from my library.  Originally published in 1943, the edition I looked at was published in 2011

As Proko mentions in his videos, Andrew has done an analysis of the head and the features. Luckily he shared his results in his book and provides maps that help locate the features on men and women in each stage of development:

• Toddler
• Child
• Teenager
• Adult

I saw these when I was much younger and the arrogant me didn't see much value in them. The only thing I remembered was that the ear is as long as the nose (brow to tip of nose). The older, wiser me reviewed them again this week and, after investing the time to make a study of each, found the gold: understanding how the features "move" from toddler to adult (drawing cute kids starts with getting their features placed correctly . . . Who knew!)

TODDLER

YOUNG BOY

ADULT MALE

ADULT FEMALE

Here is a link to some of the pages in Andrew's book.

And here is a link to a 3D version of the Andrew Loomis Head:

Andrew Loomis Head V2.0 by Vivek Aakash on Sketchfab

I'm optimistic that learning from Andrew Loomis will improve my portraits.