Head construction (skull, head planes, Loomis-style or equivalent)

Building the head as a 3D structure from skull and planes, so you can place features on something solid instead of on a flat oval.

Track it on the checklist

What it is

You don’t start with eyes and lips. You start with a simple 3D block or ball for the cranium, a wedge for the jaw, and the big planes of the face. The skull is your base: eye sockets as cavities, cheekbones as masses, jaw as a hinged block, brow ridge as a ledge. You add flesh on top of that, not instead of it.

In practice this often looks like a Loomis head or similar method: a sphere for the cranium, a cut-off side plane, then a “mask” for the face with clear front, side, and bottom planes. You mark the brow line, center line, and jaw line on that solid form, so you always know which way the face points and where features will sit.

On your page, early passes of the head should look like simple 3D objects with clear construction lines: center lines wrapping around the form, jaw corners shown as boxes, cheekbones and brows as angled planes. Even in finished work, you can feel those planes under the rendering: forehead breaking from top to front, cheeks turning from front to side, jaw turning under into the neck.

Why it matters

Without head construction, you end up with floating features on a stretchy oval, distortions when the head turns, and expressions that cave the face in instead of moving on top of a skull. Light won’t sit believably because there are no clear planes to catch it. Once you build the head as a structured object, every angle becomes easier, features stay anchored, and your portraits look solid instead of flat no matter how rendered they are.

You can check it when

✓You can draw a simple skull-based head with clear planes (forehead, cheeks, side of head, jaw) before adding any facial features, and it already feels 3D.
✓Your heads look structurally similar from drawing to drawing (same basic cranium size, jaw mass, and plane breaks), instead of changing shape every time you add features.
✓You can construct a head from any angle with a ball/box-and-jaw approach, then place the brow, nose-base, and chin lines in correct perspective on that form.
✓When you simplify a reference head into big planes, you can keep a strong likeness of its overall shape even after removing all facial detail.

Head construction (skull, head planes, Loomis-style or equivalent)

What it is

Why it matters

You can check it when

Related skills