A successful portrait can be considered a work that seems to come to life. What makes a person’s portrait come alive are the emotions displayed on it. In fact, it is not as difficult to draw a person’s emotions as it seems at first glance. If you do not draw from life or from a photograph, then before work you can go to the mirror. You need to take the necessary form and study the changes in your face. The emotions you draw on paper will reflect state of mind the person whose portrait you are depicting.
Sketch
You can draw different emotions only if you have the necessary base, so the first stage in your work is a sketch. When creating a portrait, it is important to consider the angle in order to maintain the correct proportions of the face. Draw the basics you need: the oval of the head, the neck and, if desired, the contours of the shoulders. Draw a vertical line - the axis of symmetry of the face. Divide it with a horizontal line, approximately in a ratio of 1:2, counting from the top edge. The eyes will be located at the height of this line. Draw eyebrows in small arcs. In the middle of the lower, longer, vertical part of the face is the nose. The distance between the eyes and the vertical will be equal to the size of the wings of the nose. Show your mouth with a slightly downward horizontal line. Don't forget to outline the ears and chin, and you can start exploring facial expressions. Emotions drawn in pencil are convenient because, unlike working with other materials, it will be more profitable to generalize forms without drawing everything thoroughly.
Happiness
First let's try to draw emotions happy person. In an enthusiastic state, people's eyes usually do not change, but you can show slight wrinkles that appear around them when you smile. For added effect, you can display slightly dilated pupils. The arches of the eyebrows are slightly raised. A smile can be depicted by curving the line of the mouth and lifting the outer corners of the lips. Don't forget about folds or, if the person you're drawing has them, dimples. Also, when a person smiles, their cheeks rise slightly and appear plumper; to do this, make small downward curved lines under the eyes. If the smile is “open”, then show it with several vertical lines teeth.
Anger
An angry expression on the face is mostly given by eyebrows shifted towards the bridge of the nose. The inner corners of the eyebrows drop strongly, almost pressing against the eyes, while the outer corners, on the contrary, fly up. Because of this, a wrinkle forms on the bridge of the nose, which can be shown with small vertical strokes. The eyes narrow greatly in anger, wrinkles appear under them and near the outer corners, show them with horizontal strokes. The mouth is also important: you can depict an evil grin by drawing teeth and showing the nasolabial fold with lines - from the wings of the nose to the corners of the lips. The shape of the mouth resembles a perfect circle: the upper lip seems to curl down at the corners, while the lower lip forms an upward arch. Due to the fact that the mouth of a screaming person is open, the lower jaw and chin need to be lowered, prolonging the oval of the face. The wings of the nose widen greatly. When creating a portrait evil man You can slightly sharpen your facial features, this will give it a little aggressiveness.
Mockery
The shape of the eyebrows and mouth gives a mocking expression to the face. Raise one eyebrow with an arch, draw the other like a wave, lowering the inner corner. From the side of the raised eyebrow, pull up the wing of the nose. Create a grin by lifting one corner of your lips. Due to this, the entire line of the mouth shifts slightly towards the raised corner. Lower your lower lip, leaving your teeth slightly visible. A fold also forms on the cheek on the side where the smile is extended. Narrow your eyes a little and show small strokes of wrinkles around the outer corners, just like when you smile.
Astonishment
The next emotion we will try to draw is surprise. All elements of the face of a surprised person seem wider and rounder than in a calm state. Let's start with the eyebrows. The arches of the eyebrows are strongly curved, due to this, horizontal folds are formed on the forehead. Or you can raise just one eyebrow, this will give your portrait even more surprise. When the eyebrows rise, the nose rises with them, so extend it upward a little. The eyes are often round and wide. The mouth is slightly open, the shape becomes like an oval, and do not forget to draw the teeth inside it.
Sadness
In sadness, people often lower their heads, and to show this, you need to make the frontal lobe of the oval of the head a little larger, and trim the lower jaw and chin. The eyes do not change their shape, but the gaze tends to be downward (show this by moving the pupil at the bottom of the eye), so the upper eyelids will cover the eyes a little more and appear larger. The inner tips of the eyebrows are raised, and the remaining part follows the shape of the eye, going down in an arc - this can be shown with a curve, a wave-like line. The lips will be tightly closed, and their corners will go down. If the person in your portrait is crying, the shape of his eyes will be narrowed. Tears can be shown with a simple line. The trails of tears, leaving the outer corners of the eyes, follow the lines of the oval of the face and go down to the chin, bending around the cheeks.
Disgust
When expressing disgust, the face seems to wrinkle, so horizontal folds will form on the forehead, a vertical wrinkle will appear between the eyebrows, and a slightly noticeable nasolabial fold will appear near the mouth. Draw the eyebrows as straight as possible and lower them lower towards the eyes, but raise the inner corners up. The eyes will not differ much from the neutral expression, except that they will be slightly narrowed. Disdain is also expressed by raising the upper lip on one side and exposing the teeth.
thoughtfulness
Thoughtfulness - last state, which we will try to draw. The emotions of a thoughtful person are poorly expressed. People usually relax their facial muscles when lost in thought, but the eyebrows may be drawn together in this expression, causing a crease to appear between them. Draw them in a straight line, but slightly raise the upper corners. The eyes do not change shape, but if you draw them a little narrower or completely closed, this will give the portrait even more thoughtfulness. You can look away or down, just draw circles of the iris and pupil not directly in the center of the eye. The lips will be slightly parted, so be sure to show your teeth.
Anxiety
In an anxious person, the facial muscles are uncontrollably tense, so you need to show the folds on the forehead and under the eyes. The eyebrows, as in the expression of sadness, form a wave, while the eyes are wide and round. In addition, a person experiencing anxiety may have slightly dilated pupils. The lips are compressed, so draw the lower lip a little narrower than usual; some people bite it, so you can add a strip of teeth.
We hope this article helped you understand how to draw emotions step by step, and your portrait turned out alive.
Alexander Lyubimov
Facial expressions, first of all, convey emotions. All these are annoyed, offended, excited, happy, joyful and surprised.
Emotions appeared a long time ago, all higher mammals have them: dolphins, cats, dogs, monkeys... We have a lot of them general emotions: joy, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, grief, shame, interest, guilt, embarrassment. People have an order of magnitude more emotions, I won’t list them all - just a lot.
And facial expressions in monkeys (and in humans) developed precisely to demonstrate emotions - as a means of communication. So the story about facial expressions will be strongly connected to the story about emotions.
Illustration and reaction
Emotions can be divided into those that occur as reaction: They told him - he was upset. These messages are more “sincere”, but often less expressed. And there is emotions-illustrations: visual demonstrations of the condition. They are more deliberate and grotesque, but more understandable. “Incorrect” demonstration of them is like saying in a very slurred and unintelligible way: “I want to tell you something important.” It is very difficult to communicate with such a person: the “speech” is unintelligible, and it is not clear what he wants to say.
It’s clear: emotion-illustrations are more for communication
And if emotions-reactions it’s just more convenient to calibrate - they report a “sincere” assessment of the situation - then emotions-illustrations It’s worth learning to show it “correctly” (that is, the way it is customary to show it in a given culture) and decipher it correctly.
But, most importantly, practice distinguishing the first from the second. Emotional illustrations are of little use for obtaining information about a “sincere” reaction.
At the same time, emotional illustrations are by no means something “bad” - we use them all the time. That’s why they are “illustrations” - they help to better understand words, maintain attention, convey “intonation,” etc. “Correct” emotion-illustrations are one of the main tools of a speaker, politician, and actor. Yes and in Everyday life When we tell something, we must correctly convey this non-verbal information. And when we listen, we show that we hear and sympathize.
And one more important thing:
Most people show the same emotions in more or less the same way.
At least emotions-reactions. There are problems with illustration emotions, since not everyone understands how to demonstrate them correctly.
Microexpressions
The same Paul Ekman, who is engaged in calibrating lies, talks about microexpressions - very quick facial demonstrations of emotions. People regularly try to control their own emotions. Or rather, their demonstration. But the unconscious is much faster than consciousness, and an emotion-reaction usually always manages to appear before a person decides to demonstrate something else instead.
Naturally, it is not at all necessary that a person will hide his emotions. But this happens quite often. Well, another emotion is expected or demanded from him, it is indecent in this society, its demonstration leads to unpleasant consequences, and the demonstration is more suitable - to the correct ones.
True, these same microexpressions only work for strong “basic” emotions. And their Ekman stands out for only seven: contempt, disgust, anger, surprise, happiness, fear and sadness. And these emotions must really be strong.
In general, as many experts on emotions as there are, there are as many opinions as to what the basic emotions are.
What to look for
I’ll give you a picture again with demonstrations of “basic” emotions.
And, you can see that first of all you need to pay attention to just a few things:
lips, eyebrows, eyes.
That's what a woman gets painted - that's what we look at;).
Actually, emoticons, which are used precisely to indicate emotions, have only eyebrows, eyes and lips. And that's enough.
We are training
In everyday life, we don’t often come across creepy specialists in hiding emotions - most people demonstrate them quite clearly. You just need to learn how to calibrate them (and demonstrate them “correctly”). So let's train. Basic emotions: joy, happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, contempt, disgust, anger, indignation, dissatisfaction.
It is clear that there are many more emotions and they are often “mixed”. But we’ll talk about this in more detail when we look at meta messages.
Look at the picture and identify the “main” emotion. Let me remind you that we look first of all at: lips, eyebrows and eyes. Below the picture are conditionally correct answers.
Pictures from videos of the Canadian channel Just For Laughs Gags: they create various situations and film the reactions of random passers-by. So the emotions here are quite sincere, and not played by actors.
1. The upper lip is tense and raised, the eyebrows are lowered, the fold between the eyebrows, the cheeks are raised: disgust.
2. Facial muscles are relaxed, lips are relaxed, mouth is slightly open, eyes are wide open: surprise.
3. Symmetrical relaxed smile, eyebrows relaxed, muscles in the corners of the eyes tense: joy.
4. Facial muscles are tense, eyes are wide open, eyebrows are raised: fear.
5. The lower eyelids are relaxed, the upper eyelids are slightly lowered, the lips are relaxed, the corners of the lips are down, the eyebrows are raised: sadness.
6. Symmetrical smile, wrinkles in the corners of the eyes, relaxed eyebrows: joy.
7. Lips are tense, the upper lip presses the lower lip, the corners of the lips are down, the eyebrows are tense: dissatisfaction.
8. Eyebrows are lowered and tense (fold between the eyebrows), lips are tense, the corners of the lips are down, cheeks are tense, eyes are open: anger, indignation.
9. Eyebrows drawn together and lowered, lips tense, corners of lips downward: dissatisfaction.
10. Eyebrows drawn together, nose wrinkled, upper lip raised, corners of lips downward: disgust.
11. Face relaxed, lips relaxed, eyebrows raised: surprise.
12. Symmetrical smiles, lips relaxed, eyebrows relaxed: joy.
The meaning of emotions
One of the functions of emotions is informational: they tell us about the assessment of the situation. And to others, about our attitude (toward ourselves, information or the listener).
Emotions are so-called meta-states: they are evaluative states “about”. That is, emotions don’t happen “just like that” - there is always an event about which this assessment is made.
The situation itself can be in the past, in the future, and occur in the present - emotions are always now. So they convey to us our unconscious assessment of the situations to which they relate. And how do illustrations communicate our attitude?
Joy: some value is satisfied.
Fear: there will be a very unpleasant event. (Fear always refers to events in the future.)
Astonishment: an event occurred that greatly violated expectations.
Discontent: some values are violated.
Happiness: Core values are satisfied. (Happiness, in fact, is not a very long-term experience - it arises only when we begin to evaluate the situation).
Sadness: there were pleasant events in the past that will not happen again, missed opportunities.
Grief: loss of something important.
Irritation: serious violation of expectations.
Excitement: there is a possibility of satisfying important values (gains).
Disgust: The person's behavior or event is unacceptable.
Contempt: feeling of superiority.
Delight: expectations were more than met.
Have you ever noticed features human face on a wood surface, in an electrical outlet, or on a crispy, delicious melted cheese sandwich? Aside from the fact that you might have taken a cough syrup right before this, this is explained by the fact that people by nature are machines for recognizing familiar images. With a special penchant for recognizing faces and the information they display. Our brain automatically notices them even where they are not there.
As a character artist, it is a big oversight to not be able to imbue an inanimate object with life through expressive physiognomy; convey the feelings and thoughts of its owner; make us feel for this character, empathize with him, and even with age continue to feel a special sympathy for ordinary drawings on paper. It’s akin to magic (and maybe even a little absurd).
...However, since you're reading this, I guess there's no point in me advocating the benefits of making characters emotional. Instead, I will make some snarky comments about myself as I present my chaotic notes and subjective judgments regarding the drawing process.
WHAT YOU SHOULD UNINFORM FROM
There are many tricks that allow you to avoid painstaking work over the character's emotionality. Not that they're all harmful, but if you call yourself a character artist, you have to decide how much you'll limit yourself (and your characters) by relying on these tricks. Some examples:
Zauria-zheniya
Yes, I understand that they are “fashionable” (like the plague in the Middle Ages), but besides this they are absolutely monotonous, which makes them look like emoticons, and not real emotions.
Instead you can use distinctive features your characters to make their emotions unique. Or you can continue to plaster these mediocre smiley faces right on their faces, every time you need to revive them. And I will remain passive-aggressive in everything related to this topic.
Permanent “C” shaped Mouth(1 picture) .
Emotions created by open mouth, incredibly save energy and time... but they also look incredibly boring and monotonous.
Flounder-faced commotion(2 picture) .
I am familiar with the practice of having some of a character's facial features, like a majestic flounder, placed on one side of the face. It's terribly sexy. In low-budget animation, they sometimes resort to drawing the mouth in profile in order to avoid animating the lips and chin. This is by no means a separate style and certainly not an excuse for not learning how to draw an emotion in profile.
HOW TO LEARN TO DRAW
A couple of controversial pieces of advice (It all comes down to observation).
TIPS FOR BEGINNERS
Think about everything you study! (It may not have much benefit, but it's worth it.)
Think about the structure of the character: what three-dimensional figures it consists of, and how they are connected to each other.
This is incredibly helpful in understanding how to draw a character from different angles with a face deformed by emotion.
(A.) Don't forget that all facial features are simultaneously involved in creating emotion. And the eyes, and eyebrows, and mouth compress, stretch, shift and twist at the moment when emotion appears on the face.
(b.) When recreating such compression and stretching, animators resort to deliberate violation of the anatomical structure of the body. The more they exaggerate, the more cartoonish the emotion appears.
A small change in the focus of the gaze already significantly changes the facial expression. The pupils drawn in the very center of the eyes depict surprise, as if the character is staring blindly into the distance.
Pupils drawn closer to each other look as if the gaze is focused on a close object, the face looks more fascinated, alarmed.
Practice. And as often as possible.
It's best to start with a rough sketch. Most emotions can be depicted with just a few lines, so there's no need to draw in detail to experiment with facial expressions.
Such quick sketches are a good help for creating more detailed drawings like the ones below.
(Just in case, below, in addition to everything else, I have also included notes on expressions that can debatably be called useful.)
To tone your muscles, come up with different situations for your characters. This will make you think about how to portray emotions more serious than the usual emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, etc. A specific situation usually requires a specific type of emotion: feigned curiosity, slight notes of rage, irritation, a sardonic grin...
For example, here is a passage with an incredibly stupid situation. Essentially, this is an exercise in drawing gestures and emotions.
Copying of this translation is permitted only with a link to this page.
In today's post, I will give you some tips to help you portray emotions on your face.
Observation
Let's make the most important thing clear. Best advice on this issue - or on any issue related to drawing - this is one small but strong word: observation. Yes! It always comes down to observation.
Forget about what you think you see and focus on what is truly in front of you. And don't just observe while you draw and then throw the drawing out the window at the end of the day. Even when you're not drawing, get into the habit of paying close attention to the details, as if you were drawing what's in front of you. Think about the lines and shadows you would use to draw what you are looking at.
Start looking at people's faces and notice how their features distort depending on how they feel. I like to look at people's faces and expressions when I'm standing in line at a store or anywhere else. Make notes in your head about how someone's eyes look when they're tired, or how they squint a little when they smile genuinely. Muscles clench, stretch, and twist in the face every time we show emotion, so pay attention to these movements and learn how they interact as a whole to express something.
Sketches from life
Sit in a crowded place, with a sketchbook and pencil in your hands, and sketch, drawing people and their expressions. Try to figure out what they are feeling through the way their faces contort and draw it.
This method is better than drawing from someone specific because it allows you to see genuine and revealing facial expressions. But despite this, it is very useful to have someone pose for you and express different emotions on demand. If there is no model nearby, the mirror will be your best friend!
Sketches from photographs
There are great websites that offer photographs of gestures and poses for artists to teach their own drawing lessons and practice in the comfort of their own home. A great resource is the website Figure and Gesture Drawing’s expression practice (lessons for drawing gestures and emotions). You can select the type of expression, gender and duration of the lesson.
Practice
No matter which drawing method you prefer, the key is practice. Keep a sketchbook nearby, take it out and practice drawing the facial expressions of the faces around you whenever you have at least five minutes.
