Why do people say that Loomis is a meme? Do his teachings have

His teachings are too vague so beginners don't understand their value.

>>2758056
He's a meme in the same way Starting Strength is a meme on /fit/. It's actually a decent starting point for many beginners, but it gets recommended so often that it sort of has lost its meaning, or people will recommend it as a blanket answer to everything even when it's not applicable. Like when someone asks a question rather than answer properly they will just point to Loomis.

>>2758056

1. Loomis isn't applicable for total beginners. His "Fun with Pencil" is awful book, badly written (it was his first) and with too vague exercises, leaving students with bad aftertaste. Unfortunetaly it's the first book recommended in the sticky.

2. His other books have universal principles, but are too wordy. Stuff on body proportions etc. is good, but as a reference. Most of the stuff he teaches in "Figure drawing" or "Heads and Hands" were covered nowadays by other people in much straightforward manner. See Proko for example, he can explain in 5 minutes head construction that you won't get after reading "Fun with Pencil" for 1 h.

3. While he gives good advice and has skill, he makes mistakes in his books. See famous "ball with 1 pointed lightsource" drawing in his "Figure(...)", you know, the one on which people always show core shadow etc.

It's just shit and very wrong.

4. Finally - he teaches very technical approach to drawing which simply is not good for beginners.

Beginners need to learn very, very basics: drawing from observation, having clean and accurate lines and keeping proportions together. That's why atelier/classical lessons like sight-size method are more suitable for them. People should start with "Keys to Drawing" by Dodson or other books like that.

Also for painters and other artists Loomis might at one hand be simply not enough (anatomy, planes and rhytms of the head: see Reilly's method), and on the other it might not teach enough about gesture and such stuff that you can get from, say, Vilppu or Bridgman.

Overall I'd mostly only use Loomis for reference for figure proportions.

>>2758056
cheesy af term nowadays
Same thing goes with sticky
no one takes it seriously

I think Hampton is a much better approach to beginners than Loomis, to be honest.
Not putting demerits to the guy, but Fun with a Pencil is not only very boring but also really bad in terms of writing; the book is most likely gonna teach you something if you have an art teacher by your side to guide you.

He became a meme because he was one of the the easiest recommendations for teaching the skills 99% of beginners need.

Enough beginners fuck it up that other beginners think he's useless while failing to understand the concepts he's teaching (see: dumbasses literally copying bloke faces out of the book), enhancing meme status.

I think he represents much more than just his books. When people say "needs more Loomis" I don't think they're actually redirecting you to one of his books, but really they're using an euphemism for "your construction/anatomy/proportions suck". I agree with what most people say, his books are not easy to follow for the complete begginer

File: Blook Butt.jpg (229KB, 1451x571px) Image search: [Google]

229KB, 1451x571px

>all these people talking shit about Fun With a Pencil also known as the Only Book You'll Ever Need®

Not ever...EVER going to make it.

>>2760385
I've worked through every page of that book and done every example applying the concepts that are taught. I didn't enjoy a single moment of it but I can't deny that it taught me how to use construction. However, there's a lot that it doesn't cover properly, and now that I'm reading Hampton and Vilppu, I realize the lessons in FWaP are much better learned from other sources. Calling it the only book you'll ever need is a gross misrepresentation of what Loomis teaches (or fails to) in that book.

>>2760393
>Fun with a Pencil
>I didn't enjoy a single moment of it
Hmmmm

>>2760393
Loomis is what you tell someone to go read when they haven't lurked or done any research on their own. It's punishment.

>>2760401
>punishing the people who are bad
>praise only the people who are good
And /ic/ wonders why people don't make it

>>2760404
Lurking to get information from and a feel for a community and being able to do independent research are basic skills that you need unless you want someone wiping your ass your whole life and this is how you teach them. Next you're going to tell me doxxing people who annoy you is wrong.

>>2760416
>doxxing people
>just because they annoyed you
I see now. You anons just got bigger problems within yourself. Everything will be okay. I'll pray for you.

>>2760417
I've been here since 2006, the internet was a different place. Usually you just do it for funsies, but it makes for beautiful threads when you call a tripfag by their government name and they stop fucking posting.

>>2758056
because they are shit artists and can't understand how much amazing knowledge is in these books

>>2758216
Some of loomiss shit is total nonsense i might post examples when im on my pc, in head and hands and fun with a pencil, during the step by step parts he will show step 1,2 and then step 3 is a redrawn face, it totally fucked me up when i was following along step by step. I started noticing that his body proportion examples in the step by step phases shifted, his facial proportions would move up and down. Its rediculous

>>2760401
Sure, but it's in the sticky. I was following what it said because it seemed like a good place to start and when you're new you don't really know where to begin. That beginner guide in the sticky really needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. The google docs in the beginner thread is 100x more comprehensive.

>>2760400
The name's very misleading. When you're going through that book, the only way you'll have fun with a pencil is if you're using one to stimulate your prostate.

There are generally 2 types of people who spew the "Loomis is a meme" meme. One, the beginner who starts reading Loomis as his first book who gets really frustrated because he still sucks once he's done and then blames Loomis for it.

Two, the beginner who thinks he's really advanced because he's watched a bunch of Vilppu lessons and memorized latin muscle names. Loomis is just not complex enough for their superior intellect, even though they still can't draw a figure from imagination for shit, let alone place them in perspective in complex scenes, which is what Loomis explains way more in-depth than Vilppu, Hampton and co.

>>2760616
If the only people who think that Loomis is a meme are beginners, doesn't that maybe mean that Loomis is in fact a meme when every beginner is told to start with him?
>the beginner who starts reading Loomis as his first book who gets really frustrated because he still sucks once he's done and then blames Loomis for it.
I'd be frustrated too if I struggled through some poorly explained Loomis instructions and didn't feel I made any progress. Is your argument here that Loomis is a good resource for beginners, even though he doesn't teach them what they want to learn?
> let alone place them in perspective in complex scenes, which is what Loomis explains way more in-depth than Vilppu, Hampton and co.
Does he? I always thought learning actual perspective and anatomy was a better way to develop fundamentals rather than messing around with caricatures.

>>2760636
>Does he? I always thought learning actual perspective and anatomy was a better way to develop fundamentals rather than messing around with caricatures.

Perspective is important, sure, but figures aren't going to rigidly stick to primary vanishing points and shit. So I'd say it is less important as far as figure studies. Gesture and 3D form building are most important. Hardcore anatomy knowledge is also of lesser importance compared to being able to just draw a basic figure that feels natural, sits in space, and has weight to it.

all IMHO of course.

>>2760641

Loomis 3D forms suck, he can't even draw lighted sphere correctly. And for gesture he also isn't good, Vilppu and others teach gesture a lot better (or at all, I'd be hard-pressed to find a lot about gesture in Loomis, it's usually about construction which, as other Anons said, he doesn't even do that good)

>>2760641
That's true if you only want to get better at drawing people. If you want to become better as an all-around artist, perspective will carry you much further as it applies to everything, while figure drawing is only useful for people.
Also, learning classical perspective isn't just about setting up scenes with a vanishing point. It helps you visualize basic forms in perspective, which is the first step to drawing the 3D forms necessary for construction. I struggled a lot with Loomis because I hadn't done any perspective so something as simple as building a figure with basic forms was difficult. Nobody should do Loomis or any figure drawing until they can draw boxes and cylinders from every angle in any perspective. Otherwise they will have difficulty with any figure drawing method.
Maybe it's not so much that Loomis is worse than other teachers of figure drawing, but he's just recommended as the first thing to start with when there are other much more fundamental concepts that are not taught properly in his first book.
But I still personally much prefer to learn from anatomically correct references than Loomis's blooks. Hampton and Vilppu also start with gesture and 3D form building, but their examples seem easier to understand for me, and I'm sure for a lot of other people as well.

>>2760636
>Does he? I always thought learning actual perspective and anatomy was a better way to develop fundamentals rather than messing around with caricatures.

So let me get this straight. There is this very iconic teacher who is recommended by all sorts of industry professionals, top tier ateliers and art schools, veteran comic book artists etc. This teacher has a whole bunch of books, 2 of his most famous ones are about drawing the human figure and heads, explaining the basics of perspective, anatomy, construction etc. So what does the smart beginner who wants to learn about those things do? Why of course, they read the one book of his that is about messing around with caricatures.

Did it really never occur to you that people might be talking about figure drawing for all its worth when they tell you "needs more Loomis?"

>>2760665
>Did it really never occur to you that people might be talking about figure drawing for all its worth when they tell you "needs more Loomis?"
Oh yea, when people say Loomis, I immediately think of that one specific book of his out of the dozen he's made. Not his first book, that's in the sticky and that beginners are told to start learning from. No, I think of figure drawing for all its worth, because I somehow know it'll teach me everything I need to know, even though I'm a beginner with no clue where to start or what I need to learn. Loomis definitely isn't a meme. Figure drawing for all it's worth teaches you everything from gesture drawing to product design and digital rendering to drawing environments, which is why everyone always says to study Loomis, and when they mean Loomis, they actually mean figure drawing for all its worth.
Trust me, I'm a veteran industry professional who graduated from a top tier art school.

>>2760665
>veteran comic book artists
So, you're talking about people who were born 50+ years ago and learned to draw before the internet or many of the resources we have today?
Do you believe it's impossible to get good by learning from someone other than Loomis?

>>2760665

Actually if you ask art students about books, they will be surprised if you say Loomis or don't know what you are talking about. Loomis isn't used in art universities, schools or ateliers nowadays.

There's 1 book of Loomis that became kinda popular: "Figure Drawing for All Its Worth". Still as I said before - there are serious mistakes even there like the example with sphere illumination. Loomis nowadays has mostly value as a reference for proportions and "Figure Drawing" is mostly used for that.

>>2760400
>>2760393
you have to keep in mind this isn't a book from this era

back then not everyone was a fucking add riddled faggot used to watching 50 youtubes videos everyday at 2x speed

>>2760607
Kek

reasons

>>2760691
>art schools
lmao, the difference is when you look at art schools where teachers are actually good(like Watts), they will all tell you how amazing loomis actually is and that anyone who wants to be a competent artist should at least go through his stuff.
if you think the only thing you can get out of loomis is figure drawing proportions then you're either just a shit artist and can't make use of it or you haven't actually read the books.

>>2760672
i don't know why that seems so complicated for you but that's exactly what i did, i looked at his books and started with the most appropriate one for what i wanted to do (drawing characters), going through it i quickly realized that i needed additional knowledge of perspective and anatomy and moved on from there.

>>2760883

Actually Watts doesn't do Loomis, Watts bases his teachings on the Reilly tradition. (kill yourself)

>>2761225
It's based primarily on Reilly, but that doesn't mean they won't say good things about Loomis. Proko, who was taught by Jeff and teaches at the atelier, admits that his head construction is a blend of Loomis and Reilly.

(kill yourself too)

>>2758056
Everyone here suggests Fun with a Pencil but I have yet to see anyone that constructs like Loomis here.

Loomis has a pretty academic understanding of form (too many angles and planes) which is very stupid to learn from if you want to simply learn how to cartoon or have no prior knowledge of form. I've learned much more from the Famous Artists Cartoon Course than Loomis.

>>2758056

Because people in /ic/ are extremists that can't contextualize for shit, every teacher is either a god among men or a impostor that doesn't know anything.

Loomis is a good teacher, he teaches the basics in a fairly simple manner, I undertood almost all the basics from Creative illustration (my favorite book of him) and a friend of mine that is a little below me in skill first undertood construccion drawing from fun with a pencil.

But of course Loomis it's no the best at everything. Robertson is far better in perspective than Loomis, but if you want to know the most basic things about perspective you just need to read Loomis.

>>2761805
Sorry for all the gramatical mistakes, my english is rusty.

>>2761225
Jeff literally recommends you taking weeks to work exclusively on loomis books, and loomis construction is literally the first thing he teaches in his online school about head drawing, he also repeatedly calls loomis one of the greatest art teachers who ever lived and laments the fact that the books have become somewhat obscure (not anymore though thanks to the internet).
he does however recommend to study from multiple sources (just like loomis himself) because limiting yourself is fucking stupid.
>>2761805
agreed, creative illustration is amazing and xovers so much

>>2761805

This is pretty spot on in its theory alone.

You shouldn't be beholden to a single teacher. You should be learning from as many as you can and congealing the knowledge to suit your needs and make something better.

Your English is fine, btw. Don't worry about it.

>>2758056
>Falling for the "Loomis is a meme" meme

>>2760607
can confirm

i've heard on /ic/ and even nma that he's too stylized for general application. he's not the first source to go to for beginners learning proportion and anatomy.

>>2760607
audibly kek'd

>>2758216
Alternatives to Loomis, please? I've almost finished Dodson, I have a strong grasp on proportions and observational drawing etc. Should I watch Proko's videos for figure drawing?

>>2760607
lol

>>2758056
Loomis was the Chris Hart of his generation. His begginer work is vague his intermediate work is rambly as fuck and he's just no use for an advanced artist. You could crush all his books into just 2 and keep all the relevant information.

If you really want to help someone learn to draw the human figure, rec Vilppu and Hogarth instead.

>>2760385
This book was entirely useless after just one class of technical drawing in highschool.

>>2758056
>Do his teachings have no value?
No

>>2764294
>technical drawing in highschool
What a luxury
Luckily, I can pay 10$ for Loomis

>>2764448
It was public highschool.
Didn't your HS have technical drawing, cooking, woodcutting, pottery, etc. as workshops?

>>2764539
Now that I think about it more, I think we did, but it was called something else. It was more like design houses.

>>2764539
>Didn't your HS have technical drawing, cooking, woodcutting, pottery, etc. as workshops?
Public high school in Canada chiming, and the answer is no to all of those.

>>2760607
actually chuckled out loud. ty anon.

>>2764291
>>2764294
>all that dunning kruger

>>2760607
Kek thanks anon

>>2764570

They are right though, go >>>/beg/.