Drawing Faces and Expressions

By Manci Zeelgal

Without expressions, the face is nothing. A portrait drawing that does not convey any emotion is hardly a portrait and is very boring to look at. Therefore it is very important for us portrait drawing artists to learn the ins and outs of human expressions.

Fortunately for artists, most of the work of studying human expressions has been done for use. For years, a scientist name Dr. Paul Ekman has studied human expressions and found that we all share six universal expressions. He'd also studied how these expressions are form on the face.

This information is tremendously useful for the portrait drawing artists and in my attempt to learn how to draw people faces; I've sought out Dr. Ekman's books. In this article, I'd like to share with you the six universal expressions and the traits that distinguish them. You can use this knowledge to learn how to draw people faces.

Surprised: In surprised the mouth is open and the eyebrows are raised. The eyes are also wide open. The main thing to remember about surprised is that the face is not tensed.

Fear: Similar to surprise, the brows are also lifted in fear. However unlike surprise, with fear, the inner corners of the brows are drawn together. This gives a more straightened appearance to the outer corners of the eyebrows. In the fear brow there are usually horizontal wrinkles across the forehead, yet they are shorter than the ones shown in surprise. Instead, they are more concentrated in the middle.

Disgust: The face is wrinkled and the mouth and nose is pulled up. The lips are pull upward slightly. The intensity of the feeling will be collated with the wrinkling of the face.

Anger: In anger, the eyebrows are drawn down and together. This is not to be confused with fear, where the brow are drawn together and up. The best way to depict this is to add vertical wrinkles between the eyebrows. Without these wrinkles, the expression just won't look right. The eyes will also widen with the lower lid tensing. When this is combined with the lowering brows, it causes the eyes to look as if they are bulging. The nostril will flare. The mouth can either be pressed shut or opened with the teeth showing. In both cases, the lips will be tense.

Joy: Joy is expressed though a smile or a laugh. The corners of the mouth are drawn back and up. This pushes the cheeks up and causes the eyes to appear smaller. One very important feature of the smile is that there will be wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, also known as "crow's feet". The absent of these wrinkles are usually a very reliable sign that the smile is not genuine. This tiny detail will go along way to helping you with how to draw a realistic face.

Sadness; In sadness the face droops downward. The eyebrows are drawn together and up. Although sometimes sadness can also be express by a complete lack of expression.

If you combine your understanding of these 6 emotional expressions with a good knowledge of the facial muscles that lies underneath, you will go very far in mastering human facial drawings and how to draw realistic people|drawing and drawing faces.

About the Author:

To learn about how to drawing realistic eyes all you have to do is go to my personal blogand check out all the FREE tutorials that I've posted there. You'll learn things like how to draw people and much more.