A few points:
About Loomis': you can get his original books as PDF and use them. I think they are more useful than videos: stills remain still for longer.
As for "beauty"...
I'd say, start with rough shapes.
TL;DR
I am a man of my time, grew up with comics. In primary school we were taught to draw by copying line-drawing plates and I would pay lots of attention to detail. With time I started to get acceptable results. It was in secondary school that I first got bad grades in Art: my teacher complained I payed too much attention to detail and that I shouldn't. Surprising to say the least, I could get almost "perfect" reproductions. What she wanted was that instead of aiming for perfection from start, that I started from rough shapes and then worked on them to refine the shapes. I guess she saw what I didn't: uneven proportions in the details that precluded my advance.
I think we all tend to do the same: unconsciously we exaggerate what draws our attention and reduce what we deem less interesting. Not just in Art, but in every facet of life. And we do not realize it. Nothing wrong with that, mind you, one may argue for a personal style in Art along those rules and be successful, maybe even a smashing hit. See the Naifs for instance.
OK, so what do I mean? I think -but that's my experience, YMMV- that concentrating in detail too early is risky and a slower way. As with comics, it is more important to get the proportions right than the detail. I have always loved the elegant simplicity of high key portraits in Photography and one of my frustration is not having mastered them yet.
I would suggest you start with rough shapes, trying to get proportions right. Instead of copying or mimicking others' works, just draw ovals, circles, spheres, cubes, cones... and aim to get the overall proportions right. Observe yourself in the mirror (I'm not a fan of self-portrait, there are few angles you can look at yourself in a mirror), and mostly other people and try to notice the overall outline, forget the eyes, the mouth, the ears, the hair, the nose...
Once you get the overall oval, learn to place "markers" for eyes, nose and mouth. At this stage you will likely discover that just drawing the oval, and three lines (two for the eyes and one for the mouth) is already more than enough to get a beautiful face, much like in high-key pictures or in comics.
Then, and again I speak only for myself, YMMV, it will be the time to start adding more details: a couple of dots for the nostrils. A couple of dots for the pupils. And then you can start trying to "refine" your faces to add as much detail as you want.
Note the use of underlined italics in the word "draw" above: just do it with a pencil and eraser on paper until you get satisfied. Then that same drawing on a canvas may become the reference framework of your painting. And same as for shape detail, you may start with flat coloring (nothing wrong, as shown by Pop Art) and progressively add shadows.
A small pocket sketchbook and mechanical pocket pencil may become your best friends by allowing you to practice small and quickly at any time.
A second note, and again I speak only for myself, YMMV, about lines: aiming for perfect lines is difficult and often counterproductive: I find I can get better ovals/circles by working with smaller, discontinuous, overlapping lines. That is also the basis for a general rule: you do not need detail, our brain will fill in anything missing, what you need is to convey the general impression (of a line, a face, a tree) and let the brain fill in the gaps and do all the work. Use Gestalt to your advantage.
A wonderful thing about 20th C "-isms" is that artists explored and pushed Art to the limits, making many principles explicit and discovering many new ones. Do not constrain yourself. Who says your current faces may not be considered beautiful? Maybe you are on the track to a new style. Only you should decide if you like it. Actually, if I hadn't commented before, it was because I didn't know if your output was intentional and if I comment now it is because it seems that you are not satisfied.
Final note: take all this with a grain of salt. My experience may not work for you. Whatever you do, try to have fun. That's all you are going to take (and value) from your life.