Artists! This art book is a game changer if you struggle with making your drawings simple and recognizable, and if you want to improve your sketching and form :))
sure !! This is gonna be pretty broad, I'm not much of a teacher, so I'm just gonna share what I think about when I draw expressions, and stuff I like to do to practice!
First, every part matters when drawing expressions, every single change will change the emotion you're trying to get across so it's important to think about intentions behind the expression. How big the mouth is, crinkles under the eye, wrinkles in a frown, it should all be taken into account to some degree
Think about what emotion you're trying to illustrate, and how the character and their personality influence the expression on their face. For example, the way I draw deku happy vs bakugou is very different because they themselves are different people, and won't show or feel their emotions the same way
These showcase fairly similar scenarios, but they both have very different way of showing amusement and that's something that should be taken into account when drawing any expression.
Body language is also important! Sometimes you're just drawing a bust so it's a bit less applicable but the way a character is posed will affect the expression being portrayed as well!
As for studying expressions, one of the things I enjoy doing is looking at concept art/vis dev and character stuff for animated films, and other artists' work.
These are expression sheets done by Shiyoon Kim for into the spiderverse, and a lot of how I study expressions comes from looking at these and other things like them.
Here’s some stuff I like doing to practice expressions:
Taking one face drawing different emotions on in, happy/sad/angery etc. Good way to practice variety and see how many different expressions you can get on a single face. Try keeping one element the same, like the eyes or the mouth, and varying the other elements
Try doing one emotion with different intensities, e.g. irritated, to frustrated, to angry, to furious, helps with learning both subtlety and range of expressions you can draw
Drawing a sequence, e.g. surprise to embarrassment to flustered, I think it’s good practice for characterization
I hope this could help ! None of this is really super specific so if you have other questions on expressions, feel free to ask !
Heres a MEGA folder filled with art book pdfs, if anyone has some others that you'd like me to add to it thats missing, please let me know and send me the link
126 files
EDIT 1: If you're a bit new to art and you're super overwhelmed by the options and you don't know where to start, I highly recommend the morpho series of books
Edit 2:No more Google Drive, just the MEGA folder now, so don't panic if the stuff on Google ain't there no more, its still up, just in a different location
Look at photos of Florence Welch or (ballet) dancers!! Both have very elegant and fluid poses that are dramatic and eye-catching which makes them great to reference or use for practice!
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