Studying from Andrew Loomis

[xenog]

I could really use any advice or imput on my sketches is there anyone who can help me point out what I need to work on and what areas I should study more?

Here are some sketches I drew from Andrew Loomis Figure Drawing for all its worth.

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp32/x3nog/Faces01copy.jpg

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp32/x3nog/bonesmuscles.jpg

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp32/x3nog/muscles01copy.jpg

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp32/x3nog/pose02copy.jpg

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp32/x3nog/pose03copy.jpg

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp32/x3nog/pose04copy.jpg

[flash jordan]

Aha I'm just starting the book, but these look good! :)

[LORD M]

These are looking good. Hm, atleast one advice I can think up for ya: try and think out poses of your own aswell - a bit more complex poses then in the book. Example: standing on hands, kicking a ball, etc etc. :)

[George Abraham]

The only way you can know where you are at with stuff like these is if you take the book away and then start the same but from your own mind.
Some of those pages you copied were in fact the page where he tells the reader to play with what they have leaned and then he illustrates how he would have played with it. That page weren't meant to be copied.

These books have allot of weight and is severely underestimated because of casualty and because it's free. You need to feel proficient in a lesson before you give it up or take on the next one.

These are not meant to be copied like copying a picture. You can copy it but then you have to test what you have learnt, come back, test, fix, come back, test etc..
It can be copied but in concept, so your finished stuff doesn't have to look like a Loomis drawing you need to be able to grasp and reproduce the concept though.

If you make the most of it this way this book will be more its weight in gold for you. I just drew every picture a year back; It has done done something but very little... I just went looking for more books and thought to myself that the book isn't as affective, the same happens for any book. I was wrong; it's just my discipline that was defective. Loomis has gone and summarized a big mass of fact that takes years to accumulate on your own and presented it so you can get into your memory in a fraction of the time so naturally a big book of a 160 pages more or less won't be a quick affair. I have only realized that now so I am in there with you studying your Loomis, and in your fridge, drinking your beer.

It will be better to show what you have drawn out of your own to check your progress.

What I have discovered about his stuff for me personally is:
For faces, the facial cube with all the measurements needs to be memorized until it's part of every face you draw, the spaces and alignments. You shouldn't be wondering, Ummm... how many spaces is that again?
Then the facial planes needs to be memorized, it's never perfect but you have to have some basic frame to start from(That is where I am now). He doesn't get his secret through as powerful as it should be but the plains thing needs to run in your mind if you want to have stunning shading eventually, even if your work has no remnants of blocky planes.
The ball method in my opinion should be third on your list to grasp, the ball can be confusing and it's better to leave it loose as a guide for form. The face cube and the face planes is a must.
Loomis made the ball method only when he started to teach his stuff, he was looking for another tool to make it easy to teach but it wasn't his own method at the time but it serves as another tool and he incorporated it with all the others.
Loomis had a profound understanding of the skull. So I have a little birdie singing that maybe a basic skull memorized is also essential at some point, the ability to draw a correct basic scull from memory. Combine this with the planes and with individual understanding of features and you have a really good mental resource at your creative command.

It sounds like big mission but so was driving when you where first asked to take the weel.

If these books were sold in the format they were "as is" today, they would have been the most expensive art books on the shelf.
Some folks are selling them but in little bits and pieces or volumes, otherwise these books might have replaced every book out there as the habit these days is to make big books with pretty oozy inspirational pictures but with very little value.

Z

[Mebiusu]

I can only agree with most of what Zoarr is saying. The key to learning this stuff is to do the exercises, use the lessons over and over again until it becomes instinct. I have no interest in reproducing Loomis' drawings. I have never found a mistake in his methods, nor have I ever found anything that works as well. I did however find his book on "Successful Drawing" to be the most important book. Too many artists focus on figure drawing first without building a comprehensive understanding of the entire discipline of drawing. Learn perspective first and all other things will make sense.