30 Days To A Face: Day 20

I started reading Drawing the Head and Hands this week in search of a some new inspiration. I've been doing lots of loose charcoal and pastel drawings of my own face, trying to capture values and paying less attention to detail. It's fun to do but I don't notice much progress in my drawing which has me a little frustrated. Since the proportions of the face and the placement of eyes, nose and mouth are still hard for me to get right, I was looking for a more technical approach to constructing the face.

The book is from the 1940s and it shows ("the ability to draw women's heads effectively is the greatest boon to the pocketbook") but the method looks interesting and comes recommended by several people I follow online. In fact, Stan Prokopenko's most popular video on YouTube by quite some margin is a summary of Loomis's method. I'll report back next week on how I got on with it.

I did an oil painting this week, it's the first image of the gallery above, the purple one. It's not my best with a bad case of lizard eyes but I think I want to integrate oil painting into the project for the remaining 10 days. The only problem I need to find a solution to is to find a solvent that doesn't make me moult when it comes into contact with my hands.