Drawing Facial Expressions

Today we looked at drawing different facial expressions and how to achieve a variety of emotions through the subtle changes in shapes and lines.

The first six drawings are basic emotions such as happy and sad. By changing features on the face such as the angle of the mouth, the height and angle on the eyebrows, the size of the eyes, and also whether or not there are any wrinkles where the face has scrunched up, we can clearly identify the different emotions that each face is representing. For example, the eyebrows on the 'anger' and 'disgust' faces are very similar, but the wide mouth and the wide eyed look on the 'anger' face clearly distinguish it from the scrunched and angular look of the 'disgust' face.

The next four drawings (the ones with numbers underneath) are mixes of emotions. For example, the face labelled '3+5' is a mix of 'surprise' and 'fear'. Using this combination of different facial features allows us to create a depth of emotion in our characters, and give a completely different feeling to the viewer.

Using these techniques will be important going forward into the next project, where I will be creating a graphic narrative. My project is going to be 2D with a side scroller perspective, however during conversations I am going to utilise character portraits to add more emotional context to the characters as they develop.