Heads and Faces
Create interesting characters and draw them from any angle.
Early access has ended. The full course arrives in late September or early October.
Early Access Has Ended
Look Out for the Full Course in Late September
Early access to the Heads and Faces Course has ended. But look out for the full course in late September or early October!
Over the next month, in September, I'm going to be polishing off all of the modules, taking in feedback, and making this the absolute best course on drawing heads and faces from imagination.
Here's what the course is all about.
The Problem
The Anatomy Treadmill
Hey there! Thanks so much for checking out this page. Let me tell you about the new Heads and Faces Course.
One of the most enjoyable things you can do as an artist is create your own characters. Not just once: drawing them again and again, from different angles, and having them feel like the same living character every time. It's what comic artists, illustrators, and concept artists get paid to do.
It's also where most of us get stuck, and there are two ways it happens.
The first is the anatomy treadmill. You're told the answer is anatomy, so you study. Loomis heads, planes of the face, proportions. And here's the seduction: you really do get better at the studies. But the studies don't translate. The more anatomy I learned, the stiffer my drawings got. I'd look back at my older work, lopsided and technically messy, and it had more life than my improved structural stuff.
The second is giving up on structure and just drawing in your style. I did that too. I'd design a character I liked, try to draw it a second time... and I couldn't. None of them looked the same. I couldn't get a comic past the design phase, and it was never possible for me to work as a professional artist until I got over that.
I used to draw pages of these rough sketches. Just practicing characters.
I could draw some characters well, but only from these 3/4 angles.
I had no idea how to draw a design like this from different angles, or actually put him in a comic.
I spent years teaching in university environments, a hundred students a year, and I watched almost every one of them land on one side or the other.
Drawing real characters takes anatomy and structure on one side, and style, expression, and acting on the other. Two skills you almost never see taught together. This course teaches both.
The Method
The Three Things You Need to Learn
In 25 years of drawing professionally and 15 of teaching, I've found most anatomy resources teach the first of these three and stop.
1. Structure. The planes of the face, the primary forms of the skull, the real anatomy underneath. You need more of it than you might expect as a stylized artist. You only need to learn these things once. Even the simplest cartoon eye is a graphic mark standing in for real anatomy, and knowing exactly what it stands in for changes everything.
2. Exaggeration. Structure gives you an accurate head. Then you have to make it yours. Exaggerate the nose, the ears, the teeth, and push the proportions until they fit your style. The best character actors are not symmetrical; they have a lead feature that carries the face. It's where the accurate head becomes a character.
3. Acting. The characters we love from films, comics, and games are moving. They have particular expressions, particular ways of looking at things. You can be the best artist who can draw the best face, and if the character isn't doing anything with it, nobody cares. When I drew my Pinocchio book, I had to become every character in the cast: the innocent marionette boy, the conniving fox and cat, a giant gorilla judge. If you can act through your character's face, you can make your audience feel whatever you want.
How It Works
How Each Module Works
Every module runs the same three steps.
1. The accuracy exercise. The real proportions, in the tradition of the European ateliers and academies. What the feature is, how it's built, and how to draw it from different angles.
2. The style exercise. The same feature, drawn the way you actually draw. If you work in line, we figure out the lines. If you paint, paint it. This is where the proportions get exaggerated and made to fit your own work.
3. The applied demo. A finished illustration using everything in the module. For the skull module, it's an undead skeleton warrior.
Alongside the core lessons, each feature comes with extra videos: fantasy and sci-fi translations (how real ears become elf ears, how an orc mouth gets its teeth) and style deep dives on how different artists handle the same feature.
Everything is pre-recorded and self-paced. Take a module a week the way the intensive runs it, or set whatever pace suits you.
Module by Module
The Course Curriculum
Module 0: Introduction
How the course works, the reference books and models worth having, and where everything is headed.
Module 0: Introduction
How the course works, the reference books and models worth having, and where everything is headed.
How the course works, the reference books and models worth having, and where everything is headed.
Module 1: The Skull
Everything rests on the skull. Its real proportions and fixed landmarks, how those forms get pushed for characters and creatures, and a demo that turns the study into an undead skeleton warrior.
Module 1: The Skull
Everything rests on the skull. Its real proportions and fixed landmarks, how those forms get pushed for characters and creatures, and a demo that turns the study into an undead skeleton warrior.
Everything rests on the skull. Its real proportions and fixed landmarks, how those forms get pushed for characters and creatures, and a demo that turns the study into an undead skeleton warrior.
Module 2: Primary Forms of the Face
Simplifying the skull into the few big forms you actually draw with: the sphere of the cranium, the jaw, and the major plane changes. This is how you rotate a head without guessing.
Module 2: Primary Forms of the Face
Simplifying the skull into the few big forms you actually draw with: the sphere of the cranium, the jaw, and the major plane changes. This is how you rotate a head without guessing.
Simplifying the skull into the few big forms you actually draw with: the sphere of the cranium, the jaw, and the major plane changes. This is how you rotate a head without guessing.
Module 3: The Eyes
The eye as a form in its socket, how it reads from different angles, and the link between real anatomy and the simplest graphic eye. Even two dots have to sit in the right place.
Module 3: The Eyes
The eye as a form in its socket, how it reads from different angles, and the link between real anatomy and the simplest graphic eye. Even two dots have to sit in the right place.
The eye as a form in its socket, how it reads from different angles, and the link between real anatomy and the simplest graphic eye. Even two dots have to sit in the right place.
Module 4: The Nose
The feature that most often makes a character distinctive. The underlying form and anatomy first, then exaggerating it into a whole range of different characters.
Module 4: The Nose
The feature that most often makes a character distinctive. The underlying form and anatomy first, then exaggerating it into a whole range of different characters.
The feature that most often makes a character distinctive. The underlying form and anatomy first, then exaggerating it into a whole range of different characters.
Module 5: The Mouth
The mouth as a 3D form over the teeth and jaw. How it opens, where the teeth and tongue go, which lip moves in a smile, and then reshaping it all for stylized characters and monsters.
Module 5: The Mouth
The mouth as a 3D form over the teeth and jaw. How it opens, where the teeth and tongue go, which lip moves in a smile, and then reshaping it all for stylized characters and monsters.
The mouth as a 3D form over the teeth and jaw. How it opens, where the teeth and tongue go, which lip moves in a smile, and then reshaping it all for stylized characters and monsters.
Module 6: The Ears
A complicated feature you have to know cold: real ears, elf ears, orc ears, and a system for remembering where everything goes.
Module 6: The Ears
A complicated feature you have to know cold: real ears, elf ears, orc ears, and a system for remembering where everything goes.
A complicated feature you have to know cold: real ears, elf ears, orc ears, and a system for remembering where everything goes.
Module 7: Loomis Systems
The classic system for blocking in and rotating the head, taught where it belongs: after the anatomy.
Module 7: Loomis Systems
The classic system for blocking in and rotating the head, taught where it belongs: after the anatomy.
The classic system for blocking in and rotating the head, taught where it belongs: after the anatomy.
Module 8: Extreme Angles
The head from above, below, and the difficult angles, and keeping a character consistent all the way around the rotation.
Module 8: Extreme Angles
The head from above, below, and the difficult angles, and keeping a character consistent all the way around the rotation.
The head from above, below, and the difficult angles, and keeping a character consistent all the way around the rotation.
Module 9: Studying Faces
Working from real actors: reading an interesting face, extracting its distinctive features and proportions, and rebuilding them as a character of your own.
Module 9: Studying Faces
Working from real actors: reading an interesting face, extracting its distinctive features and proportions, and rebuilding them as a character of your own.
Working from real actors: reading an interesting face, extracting its distinctive features and proportions, and rebuilding them as a character of your own.
Module 10: Hair, Facial Hair & Finishing
Hair, facial hair, glasses, and the finishing elements that complete the character.
Module 10: Hair, Facial Hair & Finishing
Hair, facial hair, glasses, and the finishing elements that complete the character.
Hair, facial hair, glasses, and the finishing elements that complete the character.
What's Included
The Heads and Faces Course
Eleven Modules, Skull to Finished Characters
The full curriculum from the intensive as pre-recorded lessons: the skull, the primary forms, every feature of the face, the Loomis systems, extreme angles, real faces, and finishing.
An Accuracy and a Style Exercise in Every Module
One exercise for the real proportions and structure, one for exaggerating them into your own style.
Fantasy and Sci-Fi Feature Translations
Extra videos for each feature: elf ears, orc teeth, monster mouths, plus style deep dives on how different artists draw the same forms.
The Course Community Space
Share your work, see what everyone else makes of the same exercises, and ask questions.
The Grand Atelier: The Art Ritual Space and the Oracle
Every major Drawing Codex course includes the main community space. The Art Ritual space runs a weekly art thread and a monthly livestream and Q&A, and the Oracle is my teaching library organised by topic: composition, sketching, anatomy, thumbnailing, and planning your development as an artist.
Coming Soon
Stay Tuned for the Full Course
Stay tuned for the full course, and thanks so much for checking out this page.