Creating verticies without edge loops?

[detox]

As a general blender knowledge question. How do i go about adding verticies on a face of a mesh. Say i have a skull, i outlined the basic shape and wanted to inset the eyes, but how would i go about making it so i can outline the eyes to move around without an edge loop. Because once i add a edgeloop the tri count goes up by a lot. As it adds more faces where i dont need them. If there a way around this, i watch blender speed modeling and i see people just create a square of verticies on a face and push it inwards. Would be incredibly useful if i knew a way like that.

Thanks, so far all my questions have been resolved, really appreciate it.

[HellJumper]

You can use the cut tool (I think it's "K"). It's hard to say exactly "how" to do it. I do different things different ways depending on what I need.

[detox]

I will try it out in the morning, Great! I just would like to create say a square onto an existing face allowing me to bring it back into the model creating a basic eye indent onto a skull. Anyways i will try it out. Thanks for the tip and hotkey HellJumper.

[HellJumper]

http://i.imgur.com/ja1Nk9C.gif

You can do that by extruding. Select a face > press "e" > press "s" > left click > press "s" again to scale down > press "e" to extrude and move inwards or outwards.