#expressions tutorial

Happy end of July to my patrons! Celebrate with a tutorial on expressions 😀😡😱😭😮😣

Continuing from the last post, @peach-senpaii​ had asked mainly about how to show someone in pain. The funny thing about that, besides the inherent comedy of physical humor and pain as comedy of course, is that...well...there are a lot of expressions that can be misread. Or have multiple readings. Or that overlap. Etc. And the slightest adjustment of, say, the eyelid (whether you draw it turned down or turned up) or the upper lid crease can shift an expression.

If you’ve ever drawn a sex scene, you probably know the struggle. If you’ve ever drawn a fight scene, you also probably know the struggle. If you’ve drawn either with a masochistic character, you really know the struggle. Pain and pleasure look a LOT alike. A good way to differentiate (and this tends to be more for sustained scenes, so like comics or animation as opposed to an illustration’s snapshot) is that pain is a sustained stressor--pain is a constant pinch, features will be pinched after the shock, pain is a state of stress--whereas pleasure is tense and release, ultimately a relaxed state--pinch and release. Relaxed brows, relaxed eyelids, relaxed muscles, in contrast to pinched brows, pinched eyelids, contracted muscles.

hello! Thank you so much.

Angles

so for the different angles of the head, its very important for you to know the proportions of the front view before drawing different angles. There are many different ways of starting the front view but I will show how I always start it out.

always draw a circle (this is for ANY angle) 

Draw a cross on the circle, the horizontal line should be drawn at the bottom of the circle, i would say between the first 1/3 and ¼ of the circle.

Draw the chin, and jaws and connect it to the horizontal line at the top

the nose should be at the center point where all the lines meet. The top of the ears should be where the eyebrows are (its ok if its eyes instead as well, I do that most of the time) and the mouth is aligned with the jaw.

same rules apply with any angle;

 start with circle again

draw the cross (see how the cross curves against the circle, think of the circle as a sphere and not a 2D shape. Heads are round like a sphere)

draw the jaw and pinpoint the ear (directly under the jaw)

then draw the cheek (remember that cheeks CURVE!) and the mouth still aligns with the jaw and the nose aligns with the bottom of the ear. Remember that the nose and mouth should always align with the chin. the distance between the eyes should be another eyeball the same size. the eyes should be a tiny bit closer to the opposite eye than to the ear, leave some space but not too much.

side profiles are the trickiest for me

circle again with a line on the edge of the circle

draw the chin and jaw, chins curve! necks do NOT go straight downward.

same alignments again as front view and ¾ view

please know that when you draw the actual face after sketching, you do NOT have to draw exactly as how the sketch is drawn. sometimes the drawing looks better if you dont completely follow the alignments etc, as long as it isn’t TOO wrong. if that makes any sense. Now that you know the alignments, you can apply to these rules to any head angle!!

if you want to draw people looking up or down: when you want to draw a person looking up, place the ears lower than usual. also if you look at the red circles next to the faces, the curves are much more bendy(?). when looking down, the ears are placed higher than usual and everything curves the opposite way.

Expressions

you just really need to exaggerate every feature on the face and you need to know how to read expressions.

remember that eyes are probably the most expressive feature (eyebrows too!). 

in the first face, you can tell he’s in thought because of the way he furrows his eyebrows a little bit and his mouth is slightly tilted to show confusion or in thought.  

in the second face, you can tell he’s uninterested/not amused etc because his eyebrows drop to a straight line and only half of his pupils are shown. His mouth hangs a little open too just to add a little bit to the expression :D

you can tell he is angry here because the way it sort of explodes movement? His hair is everywhere, his whole head thrusts forward from his body, his pupils contract and his nose wrinkles up which shows aggression.

he is embarrassed here by the worry in his face. he’s looking down and head is sort of hiding away while his shoulders rise which usually shows signs of no comfort.