Drawing Facial Expressions
Senior 3 · Fine Arts
Drawing Facial Expressions
Lesson 3 of 4
25 min
In 1668 the painter Charles Le Brun, head of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, gave a famous lecture on how to show the "passions", or emotions, in a face. His drawings of faces were later engraved and printed, and for nearly two hundred years art students across Europe copied them. The print below, made in 1727 after one of his drawings, is titled la Tristesse: sadness.
Compare it with Rembrandt's laughing face from the last lesson. Where are the differences greatest: in the mouth, or around the eyes and brows?
Definition
Oblique brows: eyebrows whose inner ends are lifted and pulled together, so that each brow slopes down towards the outside of the face. They are the clearest sign of sadness. Example: the brows in Le Brun's la Tristesse.
Depressor anguli oris: the small muscle below each corner of the mouth that pulls the corner down.
Mentalis: the chin muscle. It pushes the lower lip up and makes the skin of the chin pucker into small dimples, as when someone tries not to cry.
Sadness is quieter than happiness. The changes are small, and the most important one happens where beginners look least: the inner ends of the eyebrows. Work zone by zone from the neutral face.
In both sadness and anger the brows are pulled together, so beginners often draw one when they mean the other. The difference is the direction of the inner ends: in sadness they go up, in anger they go down. Anger also adds vertical lines between the brows, a hard stare and lips pressed thin.
| Zone | Happiness (Lesson 2) | Sadness | Anger |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brows | relaxed | inner ends up and together | inner ends down and together |
| Forehead | smooth | short lines in the centre | vertical lines between the brows |
| Eyes | narrowed by raised cheeks | upper lids droop; gaze lowered | staring; lids tense |
| Mouth | corners up and out | corners down; lower lip pushed up | lips pressed thin, or open and squared |
Worked example: the sad face that looks angry
Uwase draws a character who has just heard bad news. Her friends say the character looks cross.
Step 1. Check the brows. The brows are pulled together, but the inner ends point down towards the nose. That is the shape of anger.
Step 2. Check the forehead. She drew two vertical lines between the brows. Those lines also belong to anger.
Step 3. Check the mouth. The corners are down, which suits sadness, but on its own a down-turned mouth is weaker than the brows.
Fix: lift the inner ends of the brows so they slope down to the outside, rub out the vertical lines and put two short horizontal lines in the middle of the forehead instead, then let the upper lids droop. The character now reads as sad.
<em>How to draw Emotions & Facial Expressions</em>, from the Draw like a Sir channel. Watch how the artist changes the eyebrows first for each emotion, and pause when he reaches sadness: compare his brow shape with Figure 2.
Warning
Not just an upside-down smile. A down-turned mouth on an otherwise neutral face looks grumpy or bored, not sad. Without oblique brows and drooping lids there is no sadness.
Drawing real feelings. When you ask a classmate to act sad for you, it is a performance, so keep it light. If drawing sadness reminds you of something painful, that is normal: take a break and talk to someone you trust.
Tip
Happy lifts the cheeks; sad lifts the brows. In an exam question about expression, name the brows first: "inner ends raised" for sadness, "inner ends lowered" for anger.
Practice
Describe the shape of the eyebrows in a sad face, and say where forehead lines appear.
Which muscle pulls the mouth corners down, and which makes the chin pucker?
Name two ways sadness changes the upper eyelids or the gaze.
A face has its brows pulled together with the inner ends low, and vertical lines between them. Which emotion is it, and what one change would make it sad?
Why does a sad face drawn with only a down-turned mouth fail to convince?
Studio task. On one sheet, draw the same face three times at about 10 cm high: neutral, slightly sad and very sad. Change only the zones in this lesson, and increase each change step by step.
Analyse. Look again at Le Brun's la Tristesse. Besides the face itself, what else in the print adds to the feeling of sadness?
1. The inner ends are raised and pulled together, so each brow slopes down towards the outside. Short horizontal lines or a bump appear in the middle of the forehead only.
2. Depressor anguli oris pulls the corners down; mentalis pushes the lower lip up and puckers the chin.
3. Any two: the upper lids droop, especially at the outer corners; the highest point of the lid moves towards the inner corner; the gaze is lowered; the eyes may glisten.
4. Anger. Raise the inner ends of the brows (and replace the vertical lines with short horizontal lines in the centre of the forehead).
5. The brows and eyes carry most of sadness. Without oblique brows and drooping lids, a down-turned mouth reads as grumpy or bored.
6. Check that the three drawings share the same proportions and that the brow angle, lid droop and mouth-corner drop all increase together.
7. The head is tilted forward and to one side, the gaze looks down and away, and the cloth draped over the head frames the face and hides part of it.
Sources and credits
