Facial Expressions: Sketch Characters with Emotion

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is any and I'm an Illustrator, designer and avid sketcher. Today we're going to be sketching some facial expressions, creating a bunch of different characters that are feeling a lot of different emotions. We're also going to be working with reference pictures, looking at photographs of real people for inspiration and making drawings that then that's still exploring our own artistic style. If you've never made a sketch of a person and you don't know where to start. You may want to begin by looking at my class, learn to draw faces with forcing the shapes that will walk you through the whole process of drawing a face and individual facial features really slowly and, and really approachable way. If you've done some drawings of people before and you feel pretty comfortable with basic facial features, then this class is the perfect next step to begin exploring a wide variety of characters and bringing emotion and expression into your artwork. All you'll need is a pencil, paper, and eraser. So let's get those and get ready to sketch together. 2. Good Terms and Practices: So before we get started, I want to take just a minute to talk through some good things to remember as we're working on our sketches. So today we're going to experiment with working from reference pictures. A reference picture is a photograph that you refer to for visual information as you're making your drawing, working from your imagination is great, but sometimes you need to photo to help you visualize something or to give you realistic detail to add into your drawing. I've gotten my reference pictures for today's class from the open source image website slash. I tried to find a good variety of people to draw so that we can practice rendering different ages, facial features and ethnicities along with our expressions. You can find all of my reference pictures plus a few more that are good for practice on my Pinterest board called expression references. And I'll put the link to that in the class resources. So today we're going to be making studies based on these wonderful photographs that were taken by photographers to help us better understand human faces and how we can draw them. A study is not a finished piece of artwork, but rather a sketch that we make quickly to practice, join a certain subjects so that we can understand it better. It's kind of like taking notes in drawing form. You don't have to copy down everything exactly as it appears in the photo. We're going to be experimenting with changing and exaggerating certain shapes and features. And that's where your style as an artist comes in. The other thing I'm going to be doing with my reference pictures as we go today is copying the expressions myself. And that can look a little bit. You're doing it in a mirror or in a picture. But it gives you so much more information than what you would get by just looking at the photo alone. For example, when I make this shocked face that we're going to be drawing Later, I feel a tension between my eyebrows that I may not have noticed if I were just looking at the photo. So seeing how the expression fields on your own face gives you a great level of detail that you can include in your drawings later on. Okay, so we've got our reference pictures together. We've got a pencil paper eraser and maybe a mirror or your phone nearby to practice the expressions yourself. Let's go ahead and start drawing. 3. Happy (Smile): Okay, so we've got all our supplies out and ready to go and we're ready to start making our sketch studies of different expressions. So as we go, I'm just going to be sketching from our reference textures and narrating what I'm doing. But feel free to put your own spin on these studies. You can do things differently for me. You can exaggerate shapes and explore, make different decisions. This is all about experimenting and finding your own spin on these reference pictures. My personal sketching style has changed a little bit since I made, learned to draw faces with forcible shapes last year. But the process of creating characters from those four shapes and distribute those shapes are the circle which would be really fast. The arc or the kind of curved line semicircle, the squiggle or compound curve, and a straight line. I still use those four shapes every single day in making characters and so many other things. So even though my style has changed, my process is still very similar. So hopefully, over the course of this class, you'll be able to see how the process can apply to a lot of different styles as you're experimenting in finding your own style. Okay, so the first expression that we're going to be doing today is just kind of a relaxed confidence smile. Kind of similar to the expression that we sketched in. Learn to draw faces with four simple shapes. And this'll be a great warm up. So this is a man who is smiling. He looks relaxed, he looks competent. It's not a huge grin is really subtle expression. So I think this'll be a great place for us to start. So we're going to start with a circle for the top of his head. And again, I just do this really fast until I find kind of a basic shape that I like. And he has a very square face. So I think we're gonna be using a lot of lines too. Built his job. So I'm noticing that at first kinda comes out to the cheekbone like this. Actually lets go back and build construction lines first because I think this will help us. He's almost looking exactly straight at us, but he might be turned just a little bit to the right. So we're gonna take that brutal vertical construction line from the top of the head down just bent just a tiny, tiny bit to the right, almost imperceptible. And the horizontal construction line, he's right at eye level with us. That's going to be almost a straight line across there so that it looks very similar to the direction that he spacing. So we're gonna go back and continue building the shape of his face. He's got side of his face that comes down like that and then almost completely Square jaw that flattens out at the center and then goes back up to the cheekbone right there, and back up towards the top of the head again. So he has a very square face. I'm using very straight lines to build that. And then we'll place the IRR with an arc right where I placed that horizontal construction line. We don't see the other ear because he has a hood on, but I'm going to just lightly sketch it in because it kind of helps me know where to place things. A couple of street lines just for the suggestion of a neck. And I'm gonna go ahead because the hood is such a big part of this photo. It kind of shades and frames his face. I'm gonna go in and just kind of roughly sketch in the shape of his clothing. So he's got a collar or that kind of goes like that, just roughly sketching that in with some curved and straight lines and mixture of both. And then the hood comes down over his forehead like so. And it's gonna come down really wide of his face on either side. And the top of it kind of curves up like that. I'm running off my paper, but you get the idea. I'm not going to be doing a whole lot of shading in this class cuz we're just focusing on shapes and using lines and shapes to build form. But if you were going to be doing some shading and coloring, you could use that to help kind of emphasize the HUD shape here. Alright, so we're going to zoom in on his face here and start by placing the eyes on this horizontal line that we created earlier. So the top of his eyes are a semicircle, curve, line shape that kind of gets tallest in the middle. So I'm going to do that on either side of this vertical construction line. And as I mentioned in the previous class, I tend to do iss piece by piece, going from one side to the other to try to give them as similar as possible. And I think I've said in the previous class that I don't usually tend to draw the lower Island. And I've started experimenting with that a little bit more in recent months because I think it can really help with expression. In this case, when you're smiling, you can feel that your eyes kind of your cheeks kinda push your eyes up a little bit and maybe narrow your eyes. So showing the lower lid can kind of help communicate that. Looking towards us. So I'm going to draw a circle that kind of hugs that top line. And just lightly shade that in. Usually thicken up the top line a little bit, just for the suggestion of eyelashes, men have them too. And particularly for him, his eyes are kind of deep set into his face. You can see we're going to take an arc over the eye for the suggestion of the upper eyelid maybe where those eyes or put it a little bit, I can kind of set deep into his face a couple of other little lines to, to further emphasize that pushing up of the cheeks when he smiling, he's got kind of square-shaped eyebrows with some hairs that are kind of coming out of the shape, which I think is really cool. That's gonna be really fun to draw. So I'm gonna take some lines and just roughly sketch out that eyebrow shape. The eyebrows are very relaxed. They're just kinda, when I'm sketching, happy, relaxed expression, I kind of just let them rest in a straight line, maybe pointed up just a tiny bit, but Not a whole lot. Just resting nicely over the eye. Not pointed down in anger, but just kinda following the shape of that upper eyelid almost that you're not forcing her eyebrows to do anything will take a few short strokes outside of the shape to kind of show where those hairs are coming out of the eyebrow shape. I just think that's so cool. And then a couple of little arcs on either side to show where the nose begins, to show where the nose bridge begins. Ok, So usually for noses I draw the bottom first and then connect it back up to the eye area. So he's got a kind of a wide rounded knows. So I'm going to start with an arc here, and this is kind of lined up with the bottom of his ear, an arc here. And then that compound curve. And another arc right there. I'm almost drawing like a circle at the tip of his nose to show that it kind of is coming out from the face towards you. And then we'll take just a very subtle arc there to connect it to the eye area. So at this point I'm going to erase the construction lines for the eye and nose area because we don't need them anymore. And this won't erase completely. You'll still see it. I just don't want it to distract from what's actually part of the drawing. Again, this isn't gonna be super polished because it's a steady. But that's got the eye and nose area pretty well covered. And as you can see, there are a ton of details that I am not choosing to include there so many great details on his skin that the photographer captured. We could go further with the eyelashes or further with kind of the, the wrinkles around the eyes as he's smiling. You can choose to leave those in or take them out. That's up to you as an artist and what do you think is most important to include? So I'm gonna put just a few little lines on the inner working of the ear. Just a few little squiggles. I don't overthink those too much. And then we're going to do mouth. So he has a really great full top lip with a cupid's bow in the middle. So we're going to express that with our curves. And compound curves are artists and compound curves. So I'm going to start, let's see, his mouth is just a little bit wider than the nose. Almost like each edge of his mouth is kind of at the center of the eye I'm noticing. So that can help me with the proportion of that. So I'm just going to go up a little dip in the middle for that cupid's bow. And little further up on the other side. I'm almost going to mirror that exact shape for the inner lining of the lips. And then we have just a simple curve for the bottom lip. I'm not going to connect that. You can if you want to. And we're going to just kind of further emphasize the edges of the mouth kinda where they dimpled back into the cheek. And a little arc there maybe to show where his cheeks are pushing back. They cause he's smiling. I might bring the bottom of his jot down just a little bit to give a little bit more room between his mouth and the bottom of his chin. Yeah, there we go. Just a little change, but I think that makes his face looks a little bit for Fuller and a little bit more proportionate. I'm also noticing that he has just a little bit of a demo here on his chin. I'll just include that because I think it's a fun detail. And the like tiny beginnings of a mustache or beard, which we can express with just some very, very tiny little pencil marks. Not too much. And we don't see a lot of his hair because he's got the codon, but we can do a little bit more detail on the hood of his jacket. Just a further communicate that I'm noticing there's a little bit of rubbing on the fabric there so we can just kind of pull that in and a few places. Again, this is a study so we don't have to go full on with detail. Maybe just a tiny bit of shading to show where the hood is casting a shadow onto his face, where his jaw is casting a shadow onto his neck. And then I'm going to call that done. So that's our first face. Are relaxed, smile and let's move on to maybe a bigger grin where we're showing some teeth. 4. Happy (Grin): Okay, so we did a very relaxed kind of closed mouth smile. And next with this lady in this lovely photo, we are going to do maybe a bigger smile with some teeth that kind of throws a few different things into the mix there. So she is facing very much to the left looking at something off. So she's got maybe some Christmas lights behind her. So maybe she's looking at some Christmas lights as well, and she's just got us really excited. Look on her face that I think is going to be really fun to try to capture. So we're going to start with the circle for the top of the head. And she's kind of looking up and off. So we're going to bend that vertical construction line very much to the left. And she is looking up. So we're going to bend that horizontal construction line just a little bit up. It's not a dramatic turn. And then we're going to use some arcs to kind of build the side of her face. So she's gotten art for the forehead and then another for the cheek. And then her chin kinda comes out like so. And again, she's got a hat on so we don't really see here ear, but I'm going to put it there anyway because it's going to help me place other facial features and then later we'll cover it up with that tiny little bit of neck. She's got a scar fun. So we'll just communicate that with some loose arcs. Were not really focusing on that. And she's got the hat. I'll go ahead and draw kind of a little line where the hat meets the forehead, comes over her forehead and then down across from your like that. And we'll give that some more detail later. Okay. So I'm zooming in on her face now and I'm noticing that her eyes are very tall like very dramatically are much, much deeper, vertical arc then the eyes that we did before. So I really want to exaggerate that because as I make this kind of grinning eyebrows raised expression, my eyes feel taller because my irons are wider. So I think that really lends itself well to the features that we see here. So I'm going to take a very tall arc on either side of that construction line. Now because this i is farther away from us, it's going to be a little bit smaller, but the same shape. She's looking off to the left. So I'm going to create two circles that look off to the left and shade those in. And her eyes are very deep interface, I'm going to give a very tall lid because it's so cool. And she's got like because her whole face is engaging, she's smiling so big. She's got like these lovely folds that kind of go off like that. We don't see you as much on the other side. But she's really animated. This is a really great expression to be, to be rendering. We don't see a whole lot of her eyebrows because the hat is covering up some of it. But I actually want to bring those out a little bit more because I think eyebrows can really sell an expression. So when I'm making this face, I feel my eyebrows kind of shoot up and arc up. So even though we don't really see fully what position these girls are in this photo. That's what I'm gonna do because that's what I feel when I make this expression. So I'm going to curve these up, kinda following the line of the eyes that we did earlier. I think I want to move this out just a little more and keep this expression is really super open. I think that looks really excited so far we can come back and change it if we need to pick an up those top lines of the eye because I'm noticing that she's got like some mascara or eyelashes on, but I'm not sure that I want to completely draw those out, but I will kind of thicken up that top line to represent that. Okay. A couple arcs near the eye rolls were the nose. And then she's got this great no sheep that kind of bends in and then arcs out towards the outer edge of her face. I'm just going to bring that let me erase this. Now. I know I've said just before that I wanted to do the bottom of the nose first and then connect it. But I think with the nose like this, it's better to follow it down. So that just goes to show do what you feel is right. For now, bring it down. Curve it out for the nostril like that kind of a compound curve thing going on here. And then an arc for the nostril. Okay, so I'm going to erase the construction lies on the top half of the face now, pleased with how this is looking so far. Thick, accidentally got rid of Maya, little lower arc there. So I'm just gonna put it back. Okay, and then we'd go her mouth. So when I do this expression, and you can probably feel it as well when you do a big grin like this, you can feel your lips spread out and get thinner because they're covering a larger surface area. So we've got lips that are kind of spread wide and then we see the t. So I'm going to do a very, there's a very slight like compounding curve cupid's bow thing going on here. I'm just going to recreate that. And then almost a straight line down. So this is kind of the space that the teeth will eventually exist in. And then another curve for the bottom lip. And again, I don't have to connect that all the way because you understand that it's, they're going to kind of emphasize that dot at the corner of the mouth, or the mouth is going into the cheek. And then we're going to draw the T. So I normally don't draw out every individual tooth because it ends up kinda look in a little bit scary. But I do want to take a line across this space where the top and the bottom teeth meet, kinda follow it as an arc like that. And then I'll go back and kind of like begin to draw tooth but not really like show the the suggestion that there are individual teeth there. I might give her a little bit more top lip and shade that ends that we understand that it's different from the t. And there are a few lines here where her Malthus kinda pushing into the cheat because she's smiling so big. Again, it's up to you how many of these details you show continue erasing the construction lines as we'd go. And again, I want to do this before and I feel like I need to do it again, bring the chin down just a little bit. Maybe I'm Miss calculating where the mouth is in relation to the shin. This lady is so expressive, it's great. Okay, so then she's got a furry hat on. And normally for something that is made of for instead of sketching out the shape of it, I'll just kind of follow along the shape, but with very short pencil lines to kind of break up the shape and show this is here, but it's got a texture to it. So I might erase this line we made earlier just to show us where the hat meets with the forehead and just kind of go over what those short pencil lines. So to show this is here, but it has kind of fuzzy texture to it. It's not all just one smooth shape that kind of goes up on the other side. And again, if you were doing full color on this, you could shade it in for more contrast. And we're going to follow her hair just with some very simple arcs that kinda framed her face. You're on this side. Kind of go off the shoulder like so. You can add more or less detail depending on what seems right to you. I really exaggerated the eyes. They're probably bigger than they actually are in real life because I think her expression just calls for that. Clean up the side of her face just a little bit. And there we go, a big excited grin for our second expression. 5. Sad (Distressed): Okay, so we've done a couple of happy expressions. Obviously there are so many more that we could do. But why don't we move to something that's maybe a little bit more on their own OF sadness. So this photo, this is very dramatic. There's obviously like a staged artistic photo. But we've got a young lady with long hair and hood, and she appears to be in some kind of distress she's got now, the maybe the first thing you'll notice about this photo is the really dramatic I make up that she's got going on. I'm not going to be recreating that because I'm mainly focused on the position of her eyebrows, the position of her facial features as she's registering this emotion. So she's facing well, almost exactly toward us, but maybe looking off a little bit to the left. So again, we'll start with the circle or the top of the head. Take that construction line a little bit to the left, almost imperceptible curve. And she's looking up. So we'll bend the horizontal construction line like so. Okay, so she's got kind of a squarish face shape. So we're going to be using a combination of arcs and mines to communicate that. And you can see as I'm doing this because I'm kinda figuring this out as I go, which is what I study is all about my pencil lines. If I don't know what I'm doing, tend to be very short. And maybe you noticed this in your own artwork as well. So as much as I can, I try to commit myself to making longer pencil strokes, to really focusing in on the shapes and committing to them rather than going, Is it this way? Is that this way is this way because that uncertainty comes through in your drawing. So let me go back and try to just make one long pencil stroke for the side of the face. And then another long pencil stroke across. And one up. I think minimizing your pencil strokes is a great way to focus your attention on the shapes and recreate those in your drawing. We don't see her ears, but I'm just going to place them again. That goes off like so. Just to kind of barely curving lines. Ok. So this is kind of a dramatic expression. As I'm recreating it, I'm noticing maybe a little bit of tension in the eyebrows as her eyebrows are going up and towards the center you can see they're kind of tilted and get tallest in the center of the face. And the eyes are semi-circles that also kinda get taller and wider towards the center of the face. So this whole expression is kind of pulling up. She's looking off to the left. And I'm going to thicken those top mines quite a bit because she is wearing some quite dramatic eye makeup. I think I've made, if you compare this pupil shape in this people shape, this one is a lot wider. So I think I'm going to go in and erase that and make it just a little bit closer and shape to its neighbor. We can never be afraid to stop and erase and make adjustments if you need to. Just a couple of tiny little lines show the bottom eyelid. I'm just going to erase this horizontal line. Now to see what's construction line and what I'm going to leave in on this sketch, maybe just a tiny arc above for the eyelid. And then we have those eye eyebrows which are very thick and very expressive that are pointed up and towards the middle of the face. Of course, there are many different ways to express sadness with your face, but I do tend to notice this up and inward movement of the eyebrows quite a bit when I'm sketching expressions like this, we're gonna go ahead and shade those n because they are so dark. And I think that kind of fits with the expression that she's making. Gotta too little arcs for the nose there. Okay, she's, she's gotta knows that's rounded at the end but also very upturned. And this may be as well because our point of view is somewhat below her. So I'm going to start with an arc there and kind of a, a more dramatic compound curve for the nostrils because we're looking up, not up her nose. But we see perhaps a little more of it than we would if she were looking straight out at us. And then again, I'll kind of almost make a circle right here to show kind of the rounded nature of her nose and then connect it on one side. Usually I don't count it on both, but connected on one side to the eye area might erase just a little bit of that circle. Keep parts of it just to express that roundness. And then for her mouth, she's got a very full top lip with a cupid's bow, we see a little bit of her teeth, so our melt is partly open and then a full bottom lip as well. So I'm going to go up almost kind of a pouting expression. And so we're going to follow that curve up with the middle lip. And then the bottom lip comes across like this. C a little bit of the teeth I might shade in her lip just to help us understand what's slip and what's not. I'll give just a little bit of detail on the teeth again, not a whole lot. I kinda feel like that the king could come down a little bit further. I wonder why that is. Sometimes once you get all of the facial features on, you realize that you need to adjust the shape of the face a little bit. And then we'll just loosely draw the hair and the hood around. So her hair is kind of picking up out over the hood. It curves up and then comes down. It's got like a wave to it. Again, since we're focusing mainly on facial features, we won't spend a whole lot of time on the hair, but it does cover our ears. And the hood kind of sits on top of the hair and blows out. And we could continue shading that in. We could do the beautiful red color on her hair if we wanted to. But for now, for the expression, I'm going to call that done for the moment. So we've done kinda slightly distressed. Look, let's see what happens when we elevate that sadness, emotion into a much more extreme expression. 6. Sad (Crying): Okay. So I don't know if you can hear, but it's raining now. Kind of appropriate for the next expression we're going to do. So we've got a more extreme distressed, sad expression that are going to be drawing next. So we've got a lady here who, who's kind of sad to look at, but I think it's going to be a great expression to try to recreate by who is looking very sad. And we're going to start again with the circle or the top of the head. It's kind of an oval. And she's looking slightly to the right and down. So we're going to build the construction lines thus. And we're going to start to see using lines and arcs to build the outline of her face. So she's got kind of a long face, a chin, slightly rounded and comes down and then back up symmetrically on the other side again, you can see I'm forcing myself to use longer pencil strokes as time. Place the IRS her hair's covering them up, but they'll help us. And we'll just do a couple of little lines for the neck. Her shoulders are kind of up around her face. And maybe just the suggestion of her top there. So her eyes are actually closed or she's looking down enough that we can't see them. So I'm going to displace those as two arcs on either side of her vertical construction line. I'm gonna darken those quite a bit because we can see the eyelashes kind of shading her eyes there. She's looking down. Maybe a line there to suggest the shape of her eyelid. And she's got again kind of that up and in, but much more tense in the eyebrows. And her eyebrows get kind of wider towards the top. And there's quite a bit of tension here that I really want to highlight with some, some arcs and lines towards the middle of that space in between your eyebrows. We do see some tears in this picture, but I actually want to refrain from drawing them because I want to focus on communicating this as much as we can with the facial features themselves. Of course, you could add in a drop or a trail if you wanted to. But we want to focus on communicating tears, not just by drawing tears on a face, but by showing how the entire face is moving with the emotion that we're trying to convey. Got the beginning of the nose here. She's got. A kind of thin knows that sits straight. Face. A powerful occurred for a minute there. Hopefully it doesn't go out. And then as I'm making this expression, I can feel a lot of tension in my mouth, like lips are pressed together trying to keep whatever emotion inside. And you can see that as well in her face at her, her lips are very tense and press together. So we're going to try to convey that here. Cupids bow there. We don't want this melt to look relaxed because nothing about this expression is relaxed. Maybe some lines here, but that inward press of the mouse. Let's see, this is a little tricky. Let's see if we can bring that top lip up just a little bit. And that will communicate that pressing and got some very dramatic kind of a SMR rain in the background. It's going to bring that lip up just a little bit more. Almost kind of a little under the mouth where maybe the Chen is pressing up trying to keep the mouth shut. Almost like if you are going to open your mouth that you just start solving. Because she does, this lady just looks really sad I feel for her. However many other lines you need to show that tension around the mouth. I feel like that's really important here. Tension around the eyes as well. And she's got hair that streaming her face. So it kind of starts up here. It's got a little wave to it. It's a little bit PC. I'm just gonna go very lightly, very delicately. Almost even in this drawing, I want to handle the subject, the person with care just got some stray hairs that are kind of going in different directions. Let's go ahead and erase where her ears were. Just helped us place things. Can embrace those construction lines. There we go. Kind of a more extreme sadness expression. 7. Angry (Stern): All right, so we've done a couple of happy expressions and a couple of sad expressions. Obviously there's so much more we could do there, but let's move on to maybe some stubbornness or anger. We're going to start with kind of a more muted expression like we have for the past couple of emotions. Slightly more relaxed. And then we'll do like are really extreme anger version later. So in this photo we've got this lovely young woman. She looks like she's maybe modeling or doing a fashion themed shoot with that outlet that she's got on. And so she's got kind of like fear, somewhat stern model look, but it's kinda popular the sort of photography. So we're going to try to copy that. Ok, so she's got her head tilted down. She's looking back at us, but she's also looking very far to the right. So we'll start with the circle for the top of the head. As you kinda get the process. Someone now that we've done this a couple of times, right? So she's looking very far to the right, then that very part of the right place at very far to the right. And then down almost following the curve of that circle that I did before. So there are construction lines and then we'll make the chin come up, kind of hit the cheekbone right there. And forehead. That RE1 is actually really soothing. I hope you're enjoying it too. So we do see her ear here. Is this the first time that we've actually seen somebody's ear and not just put it in. So it connects right there. I'm gonna go ahead and give that a little bit of detail because we do see it just got a little piercing. And then we'll zoom in on the facial features. So she's got eyes that are kind of shallow semi-circles. So we'll start with that. You go a little higher than my eye line there and thicken that up because she does have makeup on, so we see her eyelashes quite well. Another little line there for her island. And she's looking kind of back at us like over her shoulder almost. And this is almost a neutral expression like so close to it. But I think the eyebrows are what put it over for me into the territory of being kind of a strong or a stern expression because the eyebrows are low next to her eyes and kind of slightly angled down. So she's got these great kind of angular browse. What kinda go down like this? And maybe I'm exaggerating the browse just a little bit because I really want to exaggerate the expression. Maybe they're not quite this angled and the actual photo, but Exaggerating the, the position of the eyebrows can really help you exaggerate the expression. You could even do a little arc there to kind of show the eyebrow pushing down into more of a furrowed brow. It's up to you and how you want to exaggerate it. We're raising my construction lines, but I can still kind of see them. Do a little arc on this side for the curve of the nose. So we'll do the bottom of her nose first and then connect it. She's got a round nose with kind of a straight bridge. So we'll do the arc there. Nostril, the compound curve for the nostril area. And then another arc and then disconnect it down. Just very gently. And then she's got a really lovely full lips with a really pronounced cupid's bow with just, I'm sensing just a little bit of tension around them OWL and I'm feeling that if I'm making that expression myself. So we're going to use that to push that into that kind of model pout expression. It's kind of mirroring the top lip. And a very full just a little bit of a line here between the nose and mouth does to show that tension of the mouth pushing in. I think she does look angrier and the drawing then she actually does in the photo, but that's what we're trying to practice. So I hope she doesn't mind. Just a little bit of her neck here. Just a little bit on the other side. And will do her hair. So her hair is very straight and very long and parted down the middle. So we'll just kinda follow the shape of her head of our spending more time on this I would shaded and or color it. Almost just kinda follows her face and then just go straight down. And on the other side it's tucked. So there's kind of like a tuck it behind her ear, which will express with a couple of little curves. And then follow that up into the hairline. And a little bit of her hair that comes down next to her ear. And that kind of falls behind her shoulder like so. Oh, there we go. Kind of a serious, stern or Fierce expression. 8. Angry (Rage): Okay, so we did kinda more of a relaxed, angry expression. This one is way on the opposite side of the spectrum and this is very extreme anger being shown in this photo. Now this subjects hair is covering half of her face. So we kinda have to imagine, well, the other side of the face looks like I'm gonna go ahead and draw out the whole face because I think it'll be more useful than just seeing half. Let's go ahead and I'm going to level with you. This one looks a little challenging, but we'll give it a go. Ok, so this one is really interesting because head tilted down toward us. So she's straight on. The vertical construction line will be just straight down. And then she's got her head tilted down towards us. So this is kind of a perspective thing. Probably one of the more extreme perspectives that we'll see you on the head today. And she's got her mouth wide open like she's screaming or yelling. So that's going to elongate the face down towards chin that's kinda squared, often dropped down here. And her shoulders are kind of up around her chin because she's tilted down towards us. Just communicating that with a few simple lines. We're not gonna spend a whole lot of time on that. Ok. So all the information we have about her eyes is from her left eye. So we're just going to copy that and then do the same thing over on the right-hand side. So her eyes are really narrowed. There's a lot of tension in her eye area because of the emotion that she's experiencing. So these are going to be very, very narrow semi-circles. In fact, I'm going to take a really dramatic line up here with the under eye and go really heavy with those pencil marks just to show how far up that muscle is pushing. She's looking dead on Atlas, which is a little scary. And there's a ton of tension around her eyes that I'm going to I almost feel like my pencil marks are angry as I'm doing this, but just a lot of really sharp, quick pencil marks around the eye to show all this tension, short kind of graphic lines. And then we've got the eyebrows which are really angled down, really furrowed down towards the middle of the face and very low on the I almost touching the eye shape. That's again, I feel like I'm using really angular shapes here. And I don't know why that instinct is, but I'm going to lean into it and see where it goes. Just very, very dark, very impulsive marks as I'm drawing this like I'm kind of feeling the tension in my hands as I'm communicating this. And this is kind of evolving into a different style. You'll notice my other drawings have been really soft so far and this is very aggressive and very different for me as an artist, but I'm going to continue experimenting with it because I think it really matches the emotion that I'm trying to capture. Okay, so we've got those really angry I is there. And then we're gonna do the nose. So she's gotta knows that kinda points down partially because of the way she's facing. So curve. And then that arc that kinda points down. You see I'm using really choppy live. I'm trying to go back over and more smoothly. Connect that to the eye area like we have before. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and erase my construction lines. This is the fun of doing studies that kinda something new emerges as you push yourself and stretch yourself. And you end up making discoveries that you wouldn't have otherwise. So we've got the nose that's pointed down and then the mouth is almost directly under it, dropped open. We do see the lip stretched across the teeth and we do see that she's got so like a cupid's bow there. And as I'm making this expression myself, it looks kind of silly in the mirror, I can see that my mouth is kind of making a wide oval shape. So the top lip stretches across the teeth and the teeth come down and an arc, almost like we're seeing the top side of the jaw. And then I'm going to need to bring my chin down again. I underestimated how long this face was gonna be. I'm just kind of following along with what I see here. We don't see the bottom teeth. We just see a little hint of the tongue, but the rest of the Malthus shaded ends. I'm gonna go ahead and shade that to provide contrasts with the teeth. And then the bottom lip. And you can see in this photo there are so many lines around the mouth of tension where the mouth is stretching up and the whole face. And even just adding that makes the mouth area looks so much less relaxed. This woman is not feeling relaxed. She's really giving us a piece of her mind here. Just cleaning up those lines, committing to what I want to do down here. She definitely looks really angry. This is very different stylistically than anything I've ever done before, but it's so much fun. And then we won't have her hair covering up half of her face like it isn't a photo, but we will bring it down a little bit on this side. Just with some gentle arcs. And you could continue going further with wines around the eye area and the mouth area. And this one for some reason has been fun for me. I hope it has been to bring you. And that is a very extreme angry expression. 9. Surprise (Engaged): Alright, we've done a couple of happy faces. We've done a couple of sad faces for exam, a couple of angry faces, which is really fun. And so now we're going to move into looks of surprise or Engagement. Being interested in what you're looking at. These are really, really great for character illustrations, especially if you're doing an illustration that goes along with a story. And you have characters who are active and engaged in what they're looking at. So for this photo, we have a child, a young girl, and that's going to present some really unique things in our drawing that we wouldn't have drawing adults. So we'll start with a circle for the top of the head. And on the whole, children tend to have rounder and shorter faces than adults do because they're still growing. So I am going to use very round lines to draw her face. And I forgot to draw my construction lines. She's looking a little bit to the left and we're pretty much at her eye level. So will bend that construction line to the left and keep the horizontal one right at her eye level. And we don't see her ear, but I'll put it there just to help us. See I, when I'm drawing kids, I tend to use rounder shapes. Exaggerate the shapes a little bit more like maybe the child in question hasn't quite grown into their facial features yet. It's a really fun age to draw. She's got her shoulders kind of up around her ears because she's leaning over maybe studying something. And she's gotten the color of her shirt that we can just kind of see here. Okay. She's also got a haircut that kind of obscures part of her forehead because she has bangs and then comes around and frames her face. So I'm just going to loosely sketch in where her hair, my cover up parts of her face so that I'm just aware of where that will eventually end up when we go back and do the hair later. Okay. So she's got very round, very wide eyes. Like maybe she's interested in what she's looking at. Maybe she's learning something in school. And she's got very tall, rounded semi-circles for the top of her eyes. That kind of build to a point towards the middle and then level off. Not quite as dramatic of a dropdown. And oh, that's kinda funky language to use, but this is what's going on in my head when I'm drawing something from a reference picture. And it's really helpful but to begin describing things in shapes as you see them. So I'm going to go up and then it kind of levels off, doesn't quite go all the way down. Same thing on the other side, a little bit smaller because she's facing to the left and she's looking off to the left. The scroll is so cute, it makes me want to have kind of a whimsical style to this. If you're having that impulse as well, just go with it. She's got a little bit of an island that we can see there. And her eyebrows are raised. Kind of they look kind of level but higher up than they might be if she were relaxed. A little bit of a curve to them. But they're very high up. I can feel as I'm making this expression, my eyebrows just really lifting up. I'm going to bring this over to the right is a little bit it feels just a little bit too far to the left. And her eyes are not super thick, but they are pretty dark. So I'm gonna go ahead and fill them in a couple of little arcs for where her nose is going to be. She's got around knows that's about halfway down her face. And again, I think because she's young, I'm just using lots of curves for this. And your mouth is somewhat open like she's listening intently and her John's just a little bit slack. And she's got this really cute cupid's bow on her lip. So I'm just going to draw that out. Follow that, are making it up the middle. And then we see her teeth. She's got like kind of crooked teeth of a first grader, like a couple of teeth missing. She's a super adorable. And another arc there for the bottom lip. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and erase my construction lines here. Actually feel like I want to erase this straight line on the nose because it doesn't quite jive with the rounded shapes that I've done for the rest of her face. In fact, let me just grab the nose. I feel like it needs to move up just a little bit and be just a little bit more simplified. Let's express her nose first with that rounded Center. And the nostril, little teeny hinted nostril on the other side. Get rid of the ER because we don't need it anymore. Why don't we add just a hint of lower eyelids so we can see exactly how wide her eyes are. Psi tweets the angle on her eyebrow and I've got a arc here for the left side of her hair. Just gonna darken up this side of her that we can see. Got her bangs just kind of come down like that. And you could go really realistic with this, are really stylize it. I love to do really stylistic drawings if kids. I think I went to clean up her mouth a little bit because I don't know that this is reading exactly as I wanted to. So we've got the cupid's bow. Why don't we bring that into some little bit. Stylize it, make it just a little bit smaller. And for myself using really straight lines as I get more stylistic, then we can really clearly show the hole there and occur for the bottom lip. Yeah, I think I like that a little bit better. Let's shade it in and see how it looks. There we go. So an engaged or surprised child, let's look at another version of surprise that's maybe a little bit more extreme. 10. Surprise (Shock): So this next expression that we're going to do is a more extreme, shocked or surprised or maybe even a little frightened facial expression. We've got a woman in here with wide eyes, open mouth, maybe some stress, tension or on the eyebrows. So I think this is going to be a really fun expression, diskette towel. So again, we'll start with the circle for the top of the head. And she's looking almost directly at us, maybe turn just a little bit to the right and we're right at her eye level. So at this point, I think you should be pretty comfortable with creating those construction lines. And these don't have to be perfect. They're just a guideline for where to place your elements later. And her face is elongated because she's got her mouth open. So we'll start here where the circle meets with the guidelines. Attached. The ears on either side. We see a little bit of neck and her shoulders go off like so we'll just sketch that in roughly because that's not our focus today. Will go ahead and put a little bit of detail on the ear. And usually that means just following the shape of the ear with an inner line and then a little pencil stroke to kind of indicate there's more going on inside of the ear, but we're not going to be paying attention to it. And if you zoom in on those facial features, okay. So her eyes are really round and wide and tall because of the expression that she's making. So we definitely want to emphasize that as we start making some curves for the eyes. And I'm noticing as I'm putting together her eyes at verb for all of the i's that we've done so far, the pupil iris section usually hugs the top of the island. But I'm noticing here that the Iris pupil areas kinda floating independently of both the top and the bottom eyelid. That's how wide open her eyes are. So let's pencil that in and see how it looks. And we can thicken up that top Island for lash line. She does have some heavy mascara eyeliner on. Kinda helps emphasize her eyes. And we can put a little bit of lower lid here just to show how wide open her eyes really are that those are hovering way down below where the Iris pupil area is. Ok, so for the eyebrows, as I'm doing this expression, I can feel my eyebrows kind of nodding in down near my eyes and pushing together kind of that. Almost a little bit of an up and end tilts like we did on the sadness expressions, but with a little bit more attention, kind of asking a question. And we'll fill those in. And I'm gonna put a few extra lines are little tiny arcs around this area to really show the muscles and the eyebrows pushing up and in the construction lines around the eyes because we don't need them anymore. And again, if you're doing a more finished illustration that looks a little bit more polished and clean. You can take more time cleaning up your construction lines and really make sure that looks nice. You could add an anchor pain to whatever you want. But for right now, since this is just a sketch study, this level of erasing is perfectly fine by me. Okay? So we're going to use our two little arcs for the bridge of the nose there. And then she's got a pretty narrow knows that's straight down and does a little bit rounded at the bottom. So we'll go ahead and use our arcs and compound curves for the bottom and the nose. Again, if you want to review any detail about a particular facial feature and some different ways to put it together. You can go back and re-watch learned draw faces with four simple shapes, will connect that with just a barely curving line. I'm gonna give us a little bit more arch to the nostrils because that's what I'm seeing in the photo. It's dark in that up just a little bit. And then we've got the mouth. Okay. So her mouth is hanging open and surprise. We don't see teeth. This feels a little bit more relaxed. Then maybe the Angry Screaming expression that we did a little bit earlier. We're not seeing lines around the mouth. The mouth is just kinda hanging open like her jaw just dropped. And so the lips are still very full. They're not stretched out over the teeth and we don't see the teeth at all. So let's go ahead and use compound curves and some arcs to express that. And another arc for the bottom lip, we don't have to connect it. And we'll see it in the inside of the mouth there. And a little bit of lighter shading on the lip. And our race a little bit of this John widened edges a little bit on the side just to match what I'm seeing in the photo. Continue to erase those construction lines. Maybe there's just a little bit of a dip under the bottom lip where the hanging open at the bottom lip is pushing down into the chin. When it come back and even emphasize that tension around the eyebrows come. I think that's just such a big selling point on this expression. Okay, let's zoom back out and we will add on her hair. She's got a really beautiful like tight crawl pattern on her hair. So that's going to be super, super fun to drop. It looks like her hairline is kinda pulled up and away from her forehead. So we're just going to give few short pencil strokes to indicate that just following around the top of the circle that we drew from the top of the head. And you can go all the way around the head for this if you want for just a not very detailed study, I'm going to leave it at those few pencil marks is to indicate what kinda just lightly erase the top of this circle that we made. And then I'm going to create kind of the outer shape of her hair with some very, very tight compound curves. Kind of parallel that and maybe come down a little bit. So again, I'm not feeling the need to fill in every single detail just to give you the impression of the shape where her hair is. Kinda like the furry hat that we did earlier. We don't have to draw every single hair for the viewer to understand the texture of the whole. I love drawing really curly hair like this. It's so much fun. That's a fun i could spend forever and just saw her hair. But I think that gives you a good impression. And that is a more extreme shocked expression. 11. Mischievous (Smirking): Okay, next up, we've got a really fun, kind of mischievous, like smirking expression. This kind of expression is really popular on like movie posters, especially for animated movies like Disney Pixar movies, you'll see characters making this expression a lot because it's just kinda fun. The subject kind of looks like she has a secret or has something interesting going on with her. So this is going to be a really fun expression to do. So she has her head tilted down a little bit, her chin tucked in towards her chest, and she's turned towards the left. Okay. So just same thing, same order of operations. Trying to keep this really long and fluid if I can see just a little bit of neck. And then her jacket like so. Okay. So she's got a great, really dramatic kind of eye make up situation going on. So she's got a semicircle for the top of the eye and then kind of a KPI or winged eyeliner going on. So I want to incorporate that into the shape that we're using for the top of the eye. I'm going to go really dark on the pencil marks for this. And this I is smaller because it's further away from us, but same basic shape going on. And then take another line over the top for the island, another R group at the top. And she's looking towards us in the photo. But because we've done a lot of subjects looking towards us, I actually wanna have her looking off to the right. I think that can kind of add to the fun mischief like she's looking over her shoulder. The lower lid. I don't draw the whole thing but just beginning it on the inner corner of each, I can kind of give you a great idea of how far the eyes are narrowed. Okay, so let's do the browse. These are very low and angled down almost like the angry eyebrows that we did earlier. But when paired with the smiling melt, that just looks kinda fun and mysterious. So I'm kind of pushing and emphasizing the fact that these eyebrows are low down towards the middle and then raise up as we get further away from the center of the face. Alright, we'll pencil in the base of the nose with our curves and compound curves. And we'll, we'll connect it to the eyebrow area. I think that actually needs to be a little bit straighter to match the photo. I'll erase that first nose line that I did. Was I going to lift up the nostril just a little bit more? It's always kind of a game of adjustments looking back and forth that your reference photo. Alright, we'll erase the construction lines around the eyes and nose. And I haven't done a whole lot with individual eyelashes because I feel like they tend to get in the way of the eyes, getting the wave, the expression, but you can experiment with it and see if there's a way that you can do it that you like because this is definitely a part of her makeup look as well. Go ahead and erase down here where we're going to talk mouth as well. Okay. All right, so as I'm making this expression, I can definitely feel it's almost like she's got her her lips pursed a little bit like that. She's trying not to smile too widely. That is just a little bit of a hint of a smile. And we can see the left corner of the mouth pushing into the cheek away from us. I actually want to flip and mirror this and have that little push, the old implement of the cheek happen on the right-hand side because she's facing to the left. So we'll see what's happening on the right side of her mouth a little bit better. The cupid's bow to the kind of wider part of the smile is on this side. Following that line through the middle of the lips. And an arc for the bottom lip. I'm going to do another kind of line there to show that little smirk and temple into the cheek. And we'll fill in. She's got like a great red lipstick thing going on. Obviously this is simplified. They're so much more here that we could do so much more detail that we can include a noticing she's got really great like apples on her cheeks and cheekbones. And so I'm just going to use an arc to emphasize that. And then we'll zoom out and do their Okay, so she's got very thick, very straight hair that comes down on either side of her face and it's parted on the side. So we're just going to use and basic arcs to communicate that. We don't see the ears, but we do see these wonderful like big hoop earrings. Again, not having to fill in the whole shape just enough to express where her hair is and what it's doing. I can go back and emphasize the side of her face to pull it apart from the hair. And there we go are really fun, powerful kind of mysterious, smirk, expression. 12. Mischievous (Winking): Okay, the last facial expression we're going to try, I think might be a fun challenge. To finish this off, we've got here a man whose winking and smiling at the same time. So they're kind of different things going on, on different sides of the face. So this will be a fun challenge to finish us off. So he is at our eye level and turned just a little bit to the right. And he's got kind of a very square face that comes down and then the job jaw and then back up again. So I'm going to do that slowly, but using some pretty straight lines. Neck and the color which will just kind of quickly sketch in there, et cetera. He's got ears that kind of stick out at the top and then come back down. We'll go ahead and put a little bit of extra detail on those. Ok. And then we've got the eyes. So the eyes are interesting because they're doing two different things. As I'm making this expression of myself with a wink and a smile, I'm noticing that I'm feeling a lot of activation and a lot of engagement in the side of my face that is winking and smiling and a little more relaxed on the other side. So the winking eyes closed will do almost exactly the reverse of what we did with the sad woman who was looking down. So if you remember, we did some kind of shallow downward arcs for those eyes here, for kind of happier closed eyes, I tend to invert that for some upward arcs. So that's what we're going to do for the left eye. And then his other eye is open, but maybe not super wide. And we'll have him looking off to the left. Hopefully now that we've done a few of these, you are also a little more comfortable with changing things around. Okay? So the left eye is winking. So there are a lot of muscles that are kind of contracting on that side of the face to keep one eye closed and the other eye open. So I'm noticing that the bottom eyelid is kind of pushing up and then we have a few lines going away from the outside of the other eye. Let's erase that just that we know what we're keeping and what's construction line. Eyebrows are sitting low over the Allies kinda like they were in the previous drawing. I'm gonna give them just a little bit more of a tilt and see what happens. Little arc over each eye. A few just quick lines to indicate the hair on the eyebrows. Got the bridge of the nose. And then I'm noticing on his nose actually kind of one side of his nose is tilting up towards the angle of the mouth out will be smiling later. That's kinda fun. And his nose is kinda rounded at the end. We'll give it just a little bit of maybe a partial circle to indicate that. And then he's got the mouth that's tilted up towards one side. So we've got our really deep kind of temple here. And a big line S his cheek is pushing up. Let's even exaggerate that smile a little bit more, even more than it is in the photo. Sometimes when I want to make sure that I am emphasizing the direction of amount, I'll actually draw the middle line as a very simple like smiley face first that looks a little bit more like a smile. And have this be the middle line of the set of lips and go back on and draw the top lip and the bottom lip around it. And again, you don't have to draw the full lips every time. You could do just a smiley face, do just a little line that's up to you on what your style dictates. He's got a little bit of a dimpled chin there. I want to give even just another line over here for the pushing up of the cheek. And then we'll do hair. Before we do hair, I'm just going back over this. I am making sure it's a really definite arc because I think that helps kinda sell the winking expression. Okay, he's got some hair that is coming in over his forehead, so I'll start with that and kind of follow that around this left side of his hairline. Little bit on the other side. And then I'm going to be running into our drawing that we did earlier, but we can just kinda roughly shape out the top of his hair and bring some hair down around his ears. Race to the top of the head. And again, we don't have to fill in this whole shape, but especially the parts that frame the face and interact with the face. We want to make sure those are clear as to what's part of the face and what's not. And then as we get further away from the forehead, we can let that be very simple. Alright, there we go. Kinda of a winking, smiling expression to finish this off and join me in the next lesson for some final thoughts about your class project. 13. Project and Final Thoughts: This is really just the beginning when it comes to drawing facial expressions, there are so many more emotions that your characters can feel an endless ways to display them in your drawings. I hope that this class has been a good starting point and has given you some good tools and examples that you can use to continue exploring facial expressions in your character illustrations. I'd love to see how your sketches turned out. So please do post a picture of your sketches to the project gallery. You can share just one of the expressions we covered today, or many, or maybe some of your own. And maybe write a little bit about how your drawing time went and what your favorite expressions where if you have any questions, you can post them to the discussion board below, or you can contact me on social media. I'm at any draws things on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Thank you so much again for joining me today. Happy Drawing, and I'll see you next time.