Reference and Practice for Sketching Face Expressions

Reference and Practice for Sketching Face Expressions.jpg

As part of my daily sketch practice in 2015 I started a set of cartoon face expressions. It became a collection of 48 emotions, concepts, and a bonus page of 9 angles of a cartoon skull.

Some are direct emotions like happy, sad, and rage. Other are more actions, concepts, and situations like eating, too full, discourage, and encourage.

In each case I can look at an expression and think of other ways to convey that same concept or how the example I drew could be used in other situations. The concept of proud looks like a self looking pride and today when I read "pride" I expected to see a pride-in-someone-else like the look on Noriyuki "Pat" Morita's face at the end of Karate Kid.

Thinking of drawing a character as an act of communicating and how only using a few elements can convey so much, makes cartooning feel like a super power to me.

  • tilt of the head
  • eyes
  • mouth
  • cheek muscles
  • eyebrows

Body posture, props, and other composition elements would add a lot of richness to this exploration. Something to consider for future direction of this project.

I'm thinking of making a zine PDF or maybe zip download of separate elements to be a useful reference, tool to learn and explore, or way to create character faces for documentation. Which of those options sounds most useful to you?

illustration, journalRob Stenzingerteaching artist, illustration, drawing, sketches, sketch, product, prototype