#drawing expressions

[ikleyvey]

Since I'm told I draw facial expressions in an interesting way, I wrote down a bit about how I decide which lines to draw for eyes! I enjoy adding all the additional lines the surround the eyes in order to enhance the believability of emotion.

Examples on some characters from a comic I'm working on.

[phoebepheebsphibs]

I’m very proud of these two expressions lol

[manic-maddie]

Rook is new to the whole...expressing one's self.

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Same character face syndrome stopped my drawings until I just said eff it!

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My Rook's only grave dowry is his silverite fangs

[indieyuugure]

(My response to @hyperchef ‘s reblog of this post)

Making an exaggerated expression that doesn’t look weird is mostly about figuring out what to exaggerate in order to convey the desired emotion. For instance, when a character is angry, exaggerate their brow line. When a character is happy, exaggerate their smile. When a character is sad, exaggerate their eyes. Examples:

By accentuating certain features, you can convey more intense emotions without it looking weird or off. Most emotions have a main focus point to which we subconsciously notice and use to figure out what someone else is feeling. Some more complex ones would be Disgust exaggerates the mouth, surprise accentuates the eyebrows, eyes and hair, sleepy exaggerates the mouth, eyes and eyebrows, and pain exaggerates everything all at once.

So for your eyes, problem, there are some tricks for drawing the tmnt eyes. Now I’m not sure exactly which style you’re talking about, but since you said you previously were working with realistic shapes, I’m guessing you’re having trouble with the Rise style.

Rise seems to have a “standard shape” for their eyes. It’s generally a rounded parallelogram. It’s composed of four convex lines that are sharpest at the eye’s tear ducts and point. The bottom is typically flat, though Leo and Donnie often have the top be completely flat and the bottom much more round, like a semi-circle.

As for the pupils, I honestly struggle a lot with this as well. I think the most important thing is to establish almost like certain standard sizes. So just keep scribbling a circle until you think it’s the appropriate size to be your standard middle size. From there you can make it bigger or smaller depending on the emotion.

so if the one on the far left is the standard, then the one in the middle is a sad smile and the one on the right is horrified shock.

You have to be careful though, I’ve found through my experience that it’s easy to become desensitized to this kind of thing. You draw a small pupil to show shock but after looking at it too long or drawing to many characters expressing that emotion, somehow it doesn’t look small enough anymore.

The same can happen in the other direction, you want a sweet expression but for some reason as soon as you’re happy with how big and round the pupil is, it’s already not enough. This is cause by you setting your eye to think that that is the standard size and now you think that the pinprick is the mid point, so “surprised” has to be smaller than that.

It’s actually really easy to undo this phenomenon, just erase the pupil, draw you pre-established standard, look at it for minute, then erase it and go back to what you were doing. This kind of thing is about relativity.

If you’re still having trouble with this stuff, you can message me with more questions that I can help you with and answer!

I hope you found this helpful. Expressions are tricky to nail. I usually draw and redraw the expressions in ROTP two or three times before I’m satisfied, and even then I’m constantly tweaking them. Don’t feel bad for not absolutely nailing it on the first try, just make sure you keep trying and tweaking your technique until you can make something you’re proud of!

Good questions! :]

[w-ich-u-blog]

Me, reading the manga again, because I have 2 days in a week for rest.... (and is great, I do not want that to end *sobs* )

And, I have to say, this man has a lot of face expressions there... AND OF COURSE I LOVE IT... so, I had to draw that, because somehow I think his eyes are kinda not easy to draw.... ahh, just enjoy this please.

[grottweiler]

Expression practice

[creadhd]

𝚍𝚛𝚊𝚠𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚎𝚡𝚎𝚛𝚌𝚒𝚜𝚎 ✍🏻 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚕𝚎𝚜

I used an original character to practice drawing the head at different angles. I was aiming to keep consistency with drawing one character but as you can probably tell I’ve still got some work to do. Overall I’m glad I did this exercise and learned quite a bit from it. I’m happier with how it looks with color than with just the sketch.

[pinkhellhasademon]

Drawing the sexy grin struggle. I'm gonna get this💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻

[thatgenderfluidmonstrosity]

Practicing expressions with Jekyll, these are both in reference to Hyde not knowing what he’s doing in the lab

Like:

H- Jekyll, lad, bud, what is all of this stuff??

J- Just give me the body back. Please. There’s a reason on why I am called Doctor and not you.

[hatteymcstache]

NOW! Feel free to take notes!

[nickydraws3]

Thought I'd practice drawing happy expressions while designing characters and this fun lil guy came out! :D In all honesty, my favorite aspect of art I enjoy doing the most is designing different types of characters with different character expressions. Especially eyebrows, they're so fun to draw.

[jehanarak]

10 days of facial expressions from back in 2022. I wanted to keep them here to remember that I did them! Recently I came across the notion of not judging yourself based on your skill, but rather the amount of experience you’ve built up.

You can clearly see I struggled on the first day, that’s supposed to be one person but I don’t think any of them look alike. I distinctly remember day seven feeling like a breakthrough. Expressions are tricky because you have to decide which lines to draw and which ones to leave out. Like all art it’s a series of decisions or problem solving - doing the wrong thing, backtracking and trying something else until it feels right.

[hinamie]

blue light overexposure dot png

[lamelarts]

Captain Curly 🧿💊💙

Honestly i love Curly from Mouthwashing a lot and especially after seeing all the fanarts of him djjdjd i decided to draw him too 🤲💙 i also drew Anya, Swansea, and Daisuke as well cause i love them sm hdjd they deserved better oh and Yimpy is there too 🙏

This game is much darker than i expected jdjdjd more of a psychological horror 🫢 All the characters r really well written and really complex jdjdjd i love Curly and Anya the most out of all of them 🤲💜 idk they really precious to me jdjdjd

[astrowarr]

after watching several povs, there's something so striking about the way mumbo died.

he dies at home, first of all, which is notable in its own right because so much of his time was spent running about, usually in pursuit of kills. he dies with grian, too— to a thing grian created, no less, but it isn't actually grian's fault for once.

mumbo dies in that tall tower and when lightning strikes, from all across the server, everyone looks. their eyes land on that tower, and everyone is watching. even in grian's perspective, you can see everyone at renwood mound, lined up and staring. those at the bamlands looked on too.

they didn't see mumbo die, but they saw grian's grief. grian, who, throughout this season, has seemed cruel and untouchable to those outside of his circle due to his involvement with and knowledge of the wild cards. they watch grian immediately crumble under the weight of mumbo's death; several of them even explicitly comment, "look at grian, he's grieving, he's in mourning."

i like to think that, until that moment, grian was almost god-like in their minds; now, though, he's the quintessential concept of humanity. grief can be religious if you do it right, after all. even beyond the grian aspect though, isn't this just the most despairing omen of what's to come?

i mean, there's something about this image of a man fallen from grace, crying out as he holds the mangled corpse of his friend in the home they made together, high in the sky, on display for all the world to bear witness to. and the world did bear witness, be it with pity, horror, joy... it doesn't matter, because they saw.

the canary curse has been broken, but this was a fittingly foreboding, tone-setting image that did a stunning job filling its shoes