While I was catching up on the mornings twitter feeds, I found one by @LackadaisyCats about her study in expressions . It got me thinking about my own study into expressions and if I had gotten lazy and forgotten. I guess if I’m guilty of anything, I haven’t expanded my shading and facial structure. I’d like to stretch and squish the face even more just from memory, but that’s gonna take more practice. For now I’ve satisfied my curiosity on where I stand currently.
This is a character I’m currently working on who’s “working” name is “Mochi”
Tracy mentioned generic expressions templates and here is the exercise that many budding artists use to try and improve their skills that I saw awhile back…
25 Character Expression Challenge
As a starter, I picked up this book a long time ago. It helped me tremendously as a visual reference from an academic-self-taught method. I still have it on my shelf when I need to reference it.
Facial Expressions: A Visual Reference for Artists
If you want to go the cost-saving way, go to your bathroom and just look in the mirror and just make faces at yourself. You may not know how to convey every emotion so you can go ahead and ask your friends and family to help you create your own facial reference book. You may need to borrow a camera so you don’t have to keep asking these people to make “that face” again.
Facial expressions convey what you need to without actually saying it, but you can’t get it right until you’ve practiced it enough. Practice, practice, practice.
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