Andrew Loomis spent the first half of his career painting smiling customers, glowing products and magazine heroines, and the second half explaining how he did it. The paintings sold soap, cereal and soft drinks; the books taught several generations of illustrators, comic artists and concept artists to draw. Read together, they make a practical design manual: plan the big shapes, light them simply, and give the viewer one clear message.
A note on images: none of the Andrew Loomis works in the collection databases of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art or the Metropolitan Museum of Art is flagged as public domain, so this guide describes his work in text and shows no pictures. Loomis died in 1959, and his paintings and books should be treated as protected unless a rights holder says otherwise. For cleared images from museum collections, browse the MGD museum inspiration collection.
Who was Andrew Loomis?
William Andrew Loomis was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1892 and died in 1959; the Delaware Art Museum, which holds his work, gives the same dates. Standard biographies say he studied at the Art Students League of New York and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and that after service in the First World War he worked for advertising agencies before opening his own studio in Chicago in the early 1920s.
The Delaware Art Museum describes him as an illustrator known for commercial advertising and a naturalistic style, who also wrote instructional art books and taught at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Illustration History, the online resource of the Norman Rockwell Museum, calls him a successful illustrator, advertising designer and author of the first half of the twentieth century, skilled at merging products and fine art in one image.
Chicago mattered. The city was a centre of American advertising art between the wars, and Loomis worked alongside painters such as Haddon Sundblom, whose Coca-Cola Santa defined a look; Illustration History connects the two men, and both painted for the same kind of national brand campaigns.
Key works and books by Andrew Loomis
Loomis’s advertising paintings rarely carry titles that museum catalogues can date, so his books are the most reliable record of his thinking. Library catalogues and the publisher records list them as follows.
- Fun with a Pencil (Viking Press, New York, 1939). A 119-page oversized book of illustrations and diagrams, according to the East Carolina University library record, aimed at beginners and built around cartoon heads constructed from a ball.
- Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth (1943). His full course in the human figure, from proportion and the skeleton to lighting and the figure in commercial work.
- Creative Illustration (1947). A book about picture-making for publication: line, tone, colour, telling a story and generating ideas.
- Successful Drawing (1951). A course on perspective and seeing form in space.
- Drawing the Head and Hands (1956). His method for constructing the head from any angle, followed by a section on hands.
- The Eye of the Painter (1961), published after his death.
Titan Books reissued the major titles in facsimile editions from 2011, as reported by CG Channel and Boing Boing at the time, and in 2014 published I’d Love to Draw!, a book prepared from a previously unpublished Loomis manuscript. The copyright status of the original editions varies by title and country, so treat them as in copyright and buy or borrow the editions rather than copying them.
On the advertising side, published biographies list clients including Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s and Palmolive, with editorial work for general-interest magazines. The Delaware Art Museum holds Loomis illustrations in its American illustration collection, where the paintings can be seen as objects rather than reproductions.
What to look at in Andrew Loomis’s illustration
Simple light on rounded form
Loomis painted in the warm, naturalistic manner of 1930s and 1940s American advertising. A single strong light, usually from above and to one side, sculpts faces and products into round, solid forms. That economy is why his pictures still read well at small sizes: the light describes the shape before any detail does.
The product as the second face
What Illustration History calls merging products and fine art is a composition habit. In a typical Loomis advertisement, the product sits close to the face of the person enjoying it, often on the same diagonal as their gaze or hand. The eye travels from face to hand to package. Designers still use the same path in packaging photography and social ads: person, gesture, product, in one sweep.
Idealised but specific people
His figures are idealised, with healthy colour, clean features and confident posture, but each head is built from a clearly constructed skull, so expressions turn convincingly. The idealisation comes from proportion and lighting choices rather than from vague drawing.
Technique: the Loomis method
The idea most people mean by the “Loomis method” comes from Drawing the Head and Hands. Loomis starts the head as a ball, slices a flat plane off each side where the ear sits, and draws a vertical and a horizontal line across the ball to fix the centre of the face and the brow. The jaw and chin hang from that structure. He divides the face into roughly equal thirds: hairline to brow, brow to the bottom of the nose, and nose to chin. Because the ball and its planes can be turned in any direction, the method lets an illustrator draw a head from angles no model could hold.
In Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth, Loomis sets out an idealised figure eight heads tall and compares it with other standards, from more naturalistic proportions to taller fashion and heroic figures. He presents these as tools for different jobs rather than rules of nature, and the book also covers proportions at different ages.
Across all the books, his sequence is the same: construct, then light, then render. Gesture and big shapes come first, tone is planned in a few values, and finish arrives last.
Andrew Loomis’s influence on illustration and comics
Illustration History credits Loomis with influencing comic artists, naming Alex Ross among them. His construction drawings also appear, credited or not, throughout today’s online drawing courses, which is a sign of how much later teaching rests on his diagrams. Fellow Chicago painter Gil Elvgren, another calendar and advertising artist, shows the same warm light and rounded modelling applied to a different market.
For designers, Loomis treated an advertisement as a designed system: a planned focal point, a value structure and a message read in a second, the same concerns as a modern poster or packaging front.
How designers can borrow from Andrew Loomis
- Construct before you render. Rough the layout in simple boxes and circles, the way Loomis roughs a head as a ball. Fix size, angle and placement before you pick fonts or textures.
- Plan values in three or four steps. Make a quick greyscale thumbnail with light, middle and dark only. If the hierarchy works there, colour will not break it. Our poster design principles cover the same test.
- Put the product on the eye path. Place the face, the gesture and the product on one diagonal so the viewer reads them in order.
- Keep warm, controlled colour. His palette favoured warm skin tones against cooler or neutral backgrounds. For mid-century colour inspiration, see our vintage colour palettes.
- Treat proportion as a choice. Loomis offered several figure standards for different jobs. In character and mascot design, decide the head count deliberately to set tone, from friendly and compact to heroic and tall.
Copyright and where to see his work
Andrew Loomis died in 1959, and none of his work appears as public domain in the Art Institute of Chicago, Cleveland Museum of Art or Metropolitan Museum of Art databases. His books are in print from Titan Books, and their status varies by title and territory, so check with the publisher before reproducing any page or drawing. To see original paintings, look for the Delaware Art Museum’s American illustration galleries, and for library copies of the first Viking Press editions.
Frequently asked questions
What is Andrew Loomis known for?
He is known for his drawing instruction books, especially Fun with a Pencil (1939), Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth (1943) and Drawing the Head and Hands (1956), and for Chicago advertising illustration in a warm, naturalistic style.
What is the Loomis method?
It is his way of constructing a head: start with a ball, slice flat planes off the sides, draw centre and brow lines across it, then hang the jaw and divide the face into thirds. It lets an artist draw a head convincingly from any angle.
Where did Andrew Loomis teach?
The Delaware Art Museum says he taught at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. His books grew out of the same practical, studio-based approach to teaching.
Are Andrew Loomis’s books public domain?
Do not assume so. Their copyright status varies by title and country, and current editions are published by Titan Books. Treat them as protected and check with the rights holder before reusing any page or drawing.
