Break it by breaking it down
Over the past few days, I’ve been immersed in drawing realistic heads—revisiting the Loomis method, doing breakdowns, and watching a ton of drawing content. Solid stuff. But I hit a weird wall.
Every time I started sketching, I couldn’t not practice. My brain kept defaulting to anatomy drills. The results were fine, but they felt rigid. Repetitive. Boring, even.
So I tried breaking the pattern.
I remembered a visual prompt I’d seen a few months back: start with abstract shapes in bold colors, then add black lines to define whatever details you see inside them.
I figured this could work nicely for heads too. After all, most heads are just made up of a sphere, a cylinder, and if you’re feeling a bit weird, a plate-like form.
I started stacking and stretching these shapes into different combinations and let them evolve into faces. It was such a refreshing way to explore stylization while still staying grounded in anatomy.
Then I noticed something: the three shapes could represent stages of a bouncing ball (neutral, stretched, squashed), aka the very beginning of animation principles. That got me thinking: what if I stacked three bouncing balls on top of each other and animated them reacting to each other in an up-and-down motion?
So I tried it. And when I started wrapping anatomy around those forms, something clicked. They felt like characters, not just studies.
If you’ve been in a similar headspace, overfocused on “getting it right”, try this kind of visual detour. Break it down. Let it be weird. See what happens.
