How to Draw Various Face Expressions - Step by Step

Hey , what's up everybody ?

Rob Marzullo here , Ram Studio comics .

Welcome back .

So today I want to work through a couple expressions with you .

Uh So these are always fun to practice and really a good thing to do uh almost daily , if not daily .

Uh Well , if you're doing comics , you're gonna be doing them daily because you're gonna be drawing your comic and your characters will have expressions .

So I guess you do practice this daily whether or not you stop to re study and rep practice that could be a different story .

All right .

So what we're gonna do here is a bit of a surprise kind of expression and I'll just show you the way that I work through this and this isn't very structured obviously in other videos .

Excuse me , I , I show you the ones where I kind of draw more foundational elements to the head here .

I'm just going right for it with the simple line down the middle line across , you know , uh especially when I do open mouth expressions .

I tend to just place it based on shapes really quick and then move things around .

Uh because whenever you get in the habit of drawing the head shape and then doing the open mouth expression , you can often time just kind of feel like you're running out of face .

So it kind of funny .

But uh it's kind of true , like it changes so much uh from this type of expression that you almost need to get uh get that into place first and then construct the face around .

At least that's the way I feel it to work .

Uh a little bit better anyways .

So , uh with a lot of expressions , uh majority of it is going to be in the basic shapes and then the expression of the eyes .

So for instance , if you do this , like pretty dramatic , almost uh yelling poles like this or yelling expression , I should say .

Uh But then you give them just regular eyes .

So I'll , I'll try to draw some regular eyes and tell you what I mean here .

So let's say the eyes are just , just kind of , you know , just a regular expression , something like that , which looks kind of weird because it's so rough right now .

But uh it doesn't match the expression of the open mouth .

And that's a big problem that I think a lot of artists uh when they're starting out , it's what they tend to do .

Uh So you have to make the expressions really fit together .

Uh So let's try something a little bit different .

We just soft to raise this back and actually the eyes are too close together anyways , I feel like , and let's get these really kind of wide open , you know , rounding to the top like this , rounding to the bottom .

So they're really just kind of stretching wide open , uh to take all the information , whether it be impending danger or excitement or whatever .

Uh You can also reinforce this with the really tiny pupils .

So you see rather quickly , it has a lot different effect than what we just had a moment ago , uh with almost , you know , no additional work .

And then the other thing that you can do is you can take the pupil area , the colored part of the eye and you can have a white on both the top and bottom of it .

And that will also reinforce that uh fear or excitement in the eyes .

So generally , when you see an eye , it's kind of relaxed and it's like this , you know , the pupil doesn't quite touch the top eyelid .

If it does , then the person will automatically look tired .

Well , in this case , it looks like they're looking up .

But , you know , you can get the idea that if the , if the eye lid is drooping down , hitting the , the eye , it's either a sign of being tired or if you , if you do the brow down like this like this and like this and you're gonna have someone that looks angry .

So it's just those very subtle changes really that , that change the expression quite a bit .

Uh , and a lot of it is in the eye .

So that reinforced with the shape of the mouth and obviously we got a pretty funky nose going on here .

Uh , there's other things you can do with the nose as far as the nose being upturned or snarled , you know , so you could have a nose that's just kind of normal like this and then you could take that same nose and you could bring up the , uh , the nostrils a bit and you can reinforce that with the , the tension on the lap lines or cheeks or whatever and you can start to do that .

And then you can also put the little wrinkles , uh , that kind of come into the nose if somebody's really grimacing or , uh , you know , straining or whatever .

So you can get into that a little bit , but the nose is a little bit less as defined as far as an emotion goes .

Uh , it's , it's really in the eyes and the mouth .

That's why I really want to focus on this because that's where you're gonna get predominantly most of your , your feeling and expressiveness rather quickly .

And then you can kind of fill in , uh , the rest and not , not worry too much about it .

Now , likewise , the eyebrows .

So if you were to take the eyebrows and tilt them back , that's real quick here , uh , then , you know , they're a little bit more on guard , scared , frightened , you know , uh , surprised .

Still , um , where maybe if he took this expression , um , let's see if we can copy it .

You're out of there , uh , duplicate this real quick , move it over .

So let's try the same thing , but let's go ahead and give them , uh , downturned eyebrows .

Now , it wouldn't really match the way the eyes are , but it's , it's always fun to experiment with this type of stuff .

So you could almost , you could almost throw it in and say that , you know , he's surprised but still kind of uh becoming angered as he's surprised , you know , you can really mix up the emotions .

Um I think that's sometimes how you're gonna get the most impactful kind of uh dynamic shots .

You know , if you , it's really easy to , like I've always say in this channel , it's really easy to get in the habit of drawing the same thing over and over again .

Uh Because you get comfortable and you go , I'm just gonna draw this face , it'll work , it'll work and you justify it in your mind when really uh as you progress , you look back and you goodness , why , why would I use that expression for every panel ?

It just doesn't make sense .

So as you become more comfortable with drawing , you venture out and you do a lot more expressions , a lot more dynamic uh differences in your body poses and things like that .

So this is kind of an example of that where , you know , you could go at this , this is an entirely different expression .

And then if we take it again uh one more time and let's uh let's move these over .

I always love drawings by comparison because you learned so much uh in this process , it's a really helpful uh way to kind of do your studies .

So let's move this over again .

And now let's change the eye shape to further uh uh you know , further push the , the anger side of it .

So we went from basically a scared surprise , look to a slightly , almost , maybe like he almost looks like I don't understand what's going on .

I'm mad .

I'm , I'm , I'm upset , I'm sad .

I don't know what I am .

And then over here , let's just make it straight anger .

So now the eyes are gonna be uh more squinted , we could leave one open and one shot , you know , and that's the other thing about eyes , you can do that as well , you know , that's , that's another interesting way to change it up .

Uh you know , you could do an offset one eyebrow up , that kind of thing .

It's always kind of a neat way to uh do an expression and yeah , let's try to do it like this like squinting and you put the squints to the side of the eyes for giving me my symmetry is lacking here today and let's bring the eyebrows down even further .

So let's go like way low with them .

We really want to push the , uh , the anger , not my purse .

You know , lots of wrinkles in between the browses , they can press together , they push the skin again .

You could do the wrinkles on the nose , you can do the wrinkles and the squinting of the eyes .

And likewise , we can bring the , the eyes up and the pupil getting slightly covered , but it's real , it's real kind of uh it's easy to get this one wrong .

So you gotta kind of play with it , but you would just want just enough where he doesn't look tired .

You don't want this angry tired look , you want this angry , I'm gonna punch something type look so something like this little glares , you know , little drop shot on the iris , ok ?

Should probably give him some nostrils so we can breather .

But yeah , so , so hopefully you can see that , you know , just from that alone , you know , you get this uh surprised uh what's going on type look this little bit of uh anger along with the surprise and then straight anger and we really didn't change anything but the eyes , I mean , obviously the the mouth does make this one work , you know , like he's yelling , he's angry , upset .

Um It goes along with the eye expression pretty well .

Um But it's funny how little changes like this can do , you know , so much for the drawing , you can change it right around so quickly just with these tiny little uh revisions .

Uh and , and plus just doing the revision side by side to me is just so helpful .

Um Like now if we take this one , we'll do one more kind of change .

Let's bring this up and I'll let you guys get back to your , your drawing be enough uh studying for today .

Let's bring this down to here and scale it down just a little bit .

Also , remember to flip your work .

I'm not doing it here , but it would help you spot like I have some symmetry issues with the eyebrows and things like that .

Just remember that flipping your work helps you to fix that .

We'll just uh look at it in the mirror and stuff like that .

OK .

So now what we'll do is we'll take this and we'll , we'll get rid of that and you know , he's got the mad look to the eyes , right ?

Uh But now we're just gonna basically take the , the , the mouth and , you know , we could do a couple of things if we wanted to make it a mix of emotions .

Again , we could have him doing kind of a little a snare , a little bit of a grin , you know , more top teeth and just a little bit of bottom teeth , maybe all just top teeth that would probably match the look better .

But you could see how because of that information in the eyes and just simply changing this to a smile , a very different concept altogether as far as emotion than what you've got uh got up top there , top , right .

And then likewise , if we were to take this uh further and do a big open mouth pause , we could bring this down to here .

And now he's kind of talking so he could shade some of this .

You still get some of the uh the upper teeth and probably a little bit less of it if he's actually talking and then a little bit of the bottom teeth down there , something like that .

So hopefully you can see it .

That is so messy .

I I tend to not try to make uh make the artwork this messy uh as I'm explaining it , but I kind of wanted to , I , I kind of want to show you the , the necessary uh stage of sketching .

Like you really want to let your sketches be sketches , you know , get them in there nice and rough .

Uh get some ideas down , conceptualize refinement can come later , but you really just wanna experiment with these ideas and , and expressions are gonna be uh there's so many of them , you really need to um to do that , get them down rather quickly and uh see what you can come up with .

And like I said , be , you know , be open to making changes to the existing artwork like this .

Uh You learn a lot in this process and uh just make lots and lots of variations .

Uh So that you don't feel yourself getting stuck with , you know , doing that same old , boring kind of face poles or whatever , you know , that's really easy to get in those uh those mental ruts and , and just doing the same thing over and over again .

Uh Definitely something you want to fight in any kind of storytelling .

Uh Because you , you know , you , you need to tell all these variety of stories and panels .

Uh Last thing you want to do is be drawing the same thing over and over again .

Um I'll do one more mouth .

I , I actually enjoy doing this type of stuff .

It's just , it's good times , good times .

All right .

So no , and then let's just take it another way and say , you know , to show the difference of these two , let's just put a , a bit of a pop .

So just the , you know , this the stretched out on uh on flinching face , not too happy right now or something like that .

Yeah , and you can just go on and on and on .

So hopefully this will be a good exercise for you to try and I hopefully gain something from watching this video .

Let me know what you think .

Be sure to like , share , subscribe all that stuff and I appreciate you watching today more on the way real soon .

Keep drawing , keep having fun and bye for now .