Drawing the Head and Hands

Should be titled “How to Draw Perfect-Looking White People”. Some nice sketches from the 1940s but it’s ridiculously focused on clean, pretty white people. One page of vaguely Latino looking men called “Characterization” Oh and one page of “Grandmothers” that look 75 yrs old+ otherwise all the women are under 30. Yikes. It’s from 1943 but still- ? Many other texts are much much better. Will probably return.

This book is chock full of vital information as far as drawing and fundamentals; worth every penny, a must have for any artist; etc etc. any nice thing you can say about this book has already been said!

If you want to learn how to draw heads definitely get this!

This is a very concrete drawing book for drawing the head and hands and it is much fit for beginers. Besides, i appreciate the vivid bearing drew by Andrew, the girl in the cover is very very excellent.

Our art teacher recommended Andrew Loomis' books to learn how to draw portraits and understand head and body structure (Andrew Loomis' "Figure Drawing"). Her portrait classes were very good but I needed this extra help at home to learn how to draw heads from all different angles (not only front side). This book has been an enormous help! Illustrations in the book look very outdated but don't let that discourage you from getting it. Andrew Loomis did know how to teach portrait drawing and his teaching method is quite easy to follow and, most important, works! I absosutely recommend this book to those who want to learn how to draw a portrait.

Indispensable tome. Suck it up and pay what you have to to get this one. Try to ignore how he breaks it all down to a mathematical formula unless you want every portrait to look the same. But an excellent primer and fun to go through.

I bought this after using the shortened versions published in the Walter Foster series. We have used those books for years, and I was thrilled to find the original available as a reprint. This is a high-quality book, printed on good, heavy paper. It is still one of the classics that has not really been replaced by anything better, as far as I can tell. If you want to study the ability to draw the human face well, (a skill that has slowly deteriorated since the early 20th century) I recommend starting with this book, perhaps along with Victor Perard's.

The majority of this book addresses the head (male and female; adult, child, and toddler). Only the last 20 pages or so are dedicated to the hands but he packed a fair amount of information in those 20 pages. While there is some discussion on the eyes, nose, mouth, etc., his primary focus is on the shape and proportion of the head. This book is a great resource for people looking for some 1940's-era inspiration. The illustrations are truly a snapshot in time.

The vintage feel of this book a lot of fun but there is a drawback - all the models depicted are white and mostly young (under age 40). Anyone interested in really learning to draw faces will want to supplement with other resources that study a variety of ethnicities, ages, and body types.

Great to have these classic Andrew Loomis books available again. I recommend Successful Drawing, Creative Illustration, Drawing the Head & Hands and Figure Drawing for All It's Worth. Loomis is a great teacher who gives the most solid lessons in figure construction of any figure drawing book to this very day. The emphasis is on commercial art, but 2D and 3D animators will have much to learn from these books. One request: before you buy, go to christoatley.com and order through the link on his website. He is a Disney animator offering lessons galore, and your purchase will help him continue this great service!

This excellent book has been on my wish list forever - copies of earlier editions are so a hard to find and very expensive. Kudos to Titan for reprinting and for keeping the facsimile format. I used the library copy as often as I could get my hands on it.

One of the first things a friend in the industry told me was, "Learn to draw hands!" (The second thing was, "Learn to draw feet.") This book is comprehensive, easy to follow, and a joy to peruse.

I can hardly wait to get a copy of it.

Titan evidently also plans to release three other Loomis books:

Fun with a Pencil (May 2012)
Creative Illustration (Oct 2012)
Successful Drawing (May 2013)

Can hardly wait to pre-order those too!

the store needs to 're scan this book the illustrations are terribly low resolution so as to be useless. For a "how to" art book with notes and construction lines on the art scans this is UNACCEPTABLE. Some of the text and lines were illegible. Buy the hardcopy instead, the digital copy is borderline useless. Dont get the wrong idea, this is one of the best if not THE best, book on portrait sketching,.easily a classic, it's a shame the low resolution photos even when zoomed in distracts/intereferes with the lessons being taught & yes I have seen the full sized hardcover which is a beauty to behold and informative drawings illustrated full size.

Great illustrator and should have been a great teaching book....however, in my entire life, I have never seen such a horrible PHYSICAL mess like what this book looked liked when it arrived. Ripped and scarred, gouged deeply throughout, even...and completely unacceptable. The seller should be ashamed.

I have all his books and will certainly order this again once the rebate kicks in. And the book said, "New"....what a joke

It is unfortunate that the store does not allow one to separate a rating for the Kindle edition from that for the print edition. I hate to give what is a superb book in print a poor rating but I feel it necessary to warn others not to waste their money.

The Kindle edition is utterly useless ~ the pages are all mixed up. Mine went from p103 to p143 to p22 to p106 etc. It's just a jumble. Furthermore, both the text and illustrations are scanned so that using Kindle for PC they must be viewed sideways (which is nearly impossible) and the same holds true on the Kindle Fire HD with the additional exasperation that the text is so small that it is unreadable.

The Loomis book in print is wonderful ~ this Kindle edition is utterly useless.

Not sure what I expected so my review will likely be of little value to most who read it. The art is interesting and dated as other reviewers have noted but for me that is not a bad thing. Had a similar book many years ago and bought this mostly for nostalgia. For that it serves its' purpose. Expectation is greater than realization and had I seen this on a shelf in a bookstore I would not have purchased it.

Great illustrator and should have been a great teaching book....however, in my entire life, I have never seen such a horrible PHYSICAL mess like what this book looked liked when it arrived. Ripped and scarred, gouged deeply throughout, even...and completely unacceptable. The seller should be ashamed.

I have all his books and will certainly order this again once the rebate kicks in. And the book said, "New"....what a joke

It is unfortunate that the store does not allow one to separate a rating for the Kindle edition from that for the print edition. I hate to give what is a superb book in print a poor rating but I feel it necessary to warn others not to waste their money.

The Kindle edition is utterly useless ~ the pages are all mixed up. Mine went from p103 to p143 to p22 to p106 etc. It's just a jumble. Furthermore, both the text and illustrations are scanned so that using Kindle for PC they must be viewed sideways (which is nearly impossible) and the same holds true on the Kindle Fire HD with the additional exasperation that the text is so small that it is unreadable.

The Loomis book in print is wonderful ~ this Kindle edition is utterly useless.

Not sure what I expected so my review will likely be of little value to most who read it. The art is interesting and dated as other reviewers have noted but for me that is not a bad thing. Had a similar book many years ago and bought this mostly for nostalgia. For that it serves its' purpose. Expectation is greater than realization and had I seen this on a shelf in a bookstore I would not have purchased it.

Mr. Loomis was a passionate and incredibly talented artist, and I think that his ability to draw portraits, particularly of small children, was virtually second to none. Furthermore, he was a firm believer in inspiring young talent and emphasized the joyous act of creating art if one takes the time to practice repeatedly and never take short cuts.

All of Loomis’s books contain a fair amount of writing, introductory material, and getting you in the right frame of mind to tackle the subject. This should absolutely not be glossed over because with few exceptions most all of it is worthwhile and will have you thinking about and observing the right things. Yet for all of this, Loomis commits the same sins of many instructors, most of which can be boiled down to the classic “Do as I say, not as I do.”

At the core of the technique is a constructive method, approaching the head as if it’s built of steel girders and then covered in curtain walls. Loomis emphasizes every analogy you can imagine to this end, and freely admits this concept is an elaboration of one he first explored in the much lighter “Fun with a Pencil.” He even goes so far to say that if you do not construct heads in this manner, you will wind up blind and confused, and make critical mistakes more often than you stumble upon happy accidents. But then he seems to contradict this very advice in Plate #2 of the book, where instead of presenting the “sliced sphere” as the foundation of the head, he draws the cranium as an elongated bulbous mass and then constructs the brow, cheekbones, and mandible based on more advanced anatomical knowledge. Unfortunately, this kind of thing crops up all the time in drawing instruction, where the introductory material is too simplified, and then critical steps are glossed over. Loomis is no different.

How much does this really matter? In the end, it’s frustrating, but then there is no magic potion to being able to draw and Loomis is but one of many tools that should be in your kit. Sliced spheres or egg shapes, geometric ratios or diagrams — trying to learn how to draw the head without understanding all of the underlying anatomy will only get you so far and is ultimately a losing proposition. Loomis’s book works as an inspirational text and you most certainly will pick up a lot from it — but if you find yourself a bit confused or unable to exactly follow his methods, don’t be surprised. He’s notorious for being avuncular to a fault and then presenting lots of his drawings.

UPDATE: Having now worked my way through about half of this book I can say that I've grown to love it, even if it still suffers from the faults I mentioned above. Loomis imparts a tremendous amount of timeless advice about skeletal structure, skin behavior, the aging process... so taking all of this into consideration I now place this as one of the best introductory drawing books I've come across.

This is the best book I have found with instructions for drawing the human head from all angles. I have been drawing for over 5yrs and I have seen many YouTube videos and many books with different ways to draw the human head, but Andrew Loomis is a master at drawing and explaining his process. With a lot of practice I believe anyone can learn this method and become good at drawing the human head and face. I have not studied the hands portion of the book which takes up only 15 percent of the back part of the book. If it is great also I will update my review to include that portion later

In a nutshell, this book is about getting the proportions of the human head correct.

Now for the the review, "Drawing the Head and Hands" by Andrew Loomis is a pretty decent book. All his books on the store seem to have fairly high rankings, so I know that I am the minority opinion. However, The reason why I gave this book three stars instead of five stars like most have, is because it is not very comprehensive regarding the head, and it fails to teach barely anything when it comes to drawing the hands. Nevertheless, Andrew does a fantastic job on the discussing the planes of the head (how light moves on the head) and the proportions of the human head. His solution to drawing the head is not very effective... at least in my opinion. Regarding the head, you get a good understanding on how to draw the front and side view and an okay explanation on how to draw the three quarter view, but other than that it's pretty much a cliff hanger.His method of drawing the head would be best suited for people who primarily draw and paint portraits, as well as draw and paint relatively posed positions of the human figure. On the contrary, if you paint and draw people in complicated, acrobatic, and dynamic views, then this book isn't going to teach you to do that. If you use this method to draw the head on the human body, than sometimes it can be rather tough to draw it in proportion ( or in correct relationship with the body). I highly advise that you still get this book, but then buy "Drawing the Human Head" by Burne Hogarth, because that book will pretty much pick up where this one leaves off, teaching more you more check points in order to draw the head accurately, therefore giving you a more comprehensive understanding of the human head. Personally, I have have created my own method of drawing the head, which is a combination of both Andrew's and Burne's doctrines, along with some others as well. Oh yeah Burne Hogarth's book "Drawing Dynamic Hands" is much better than what Loomis has done in this. Lastly, if your the complete beginner I recommend you buy "Drawing the Head and Figure" by Jack Hamm first.

Great asset to have in your home library! Wonderful teaching and great examples of work throughout. This is the best book on drawing the head I've seen to date. Looking forward to drawing my way through the book.