The emotional intensity is not yet on top, the character is starting to get angry. In this stage, I tried to represent a character who is pis off. Little elevation of one side of the upper lip or showing the teeth will help to express better the annoyance in our character. Anger:ĭrawing the eyelids down gives to our character a more contemptuous look. This helps to break symmetry on the face and gives to our character a more natural and believable expression. His pupils become smaller, our boy is looking at something that took him by surprise.Īn interesting trick could be to elevate one eyebrow more than the other in order, so we can create some imbalance. The mouth becomes a little circle trying to communicate the expression OHHH!!!. Similar eyebrows compared to the happiness emotion. The mouth can be open or not depending on the intensity of the emotion. The eyes are open all the way and the eyebrows become a couple of arches. Our boy is trying to keep his emotions under control but he is failing and is about to explode. You can really feel the emotional conflict inside our character. The eyes are open but not really looking at anything. We will call them basic emotions because they are a quick response to a primary stimulus. Let´s start with the most common ones that will be understood regardless of the cultural background of our spectator. Now is time to introduce emotions to our face.
The only thing you have to consider is the direction towards which parts of the hair is oriented on each side.įor the drawing of the head, we used a neutral expression. For this purpose, we will arrange randomly the simplified tufts of hair. Being our character a child, we will make the hair somewhat scrambled. We will group the hair into sets of beak-shaped tufts. Regarding the hair, we will simplify its shape as much as possible. In this case, the mouth is just a little cut on the face and barely comes out under the sides of the nose. Remember, in a realistic face, the sides of the mouth will align perfectly with the center of each eye. A circle with a dot inside, representing the iris and the pupil, will be drawn under each eyelid. The eyes will be drawn as two curves for the upper eyelids. This is important because we will draw different expressions on the face of our character, but meanwhile both lips and the jaw will move, the upper row of teeth will not. This line will be where the upper row of teeth will be placed. A little bit above the lower lip line, we will draw the line of the mouth. The middle point between the nostrils and the chin will be where the lower lip will be located. This point will be where the nostrils of the nose will be placed. Remember our head is in a 3/4 view, so both parts will have different sizes.įollowing the vertical line, we will find the middle point between the eyebrows and the chin. Then we will divide the whole head with another vertical line. Again, the ears will look like a simplistic and bigger version of the real ones. We are already starting to bent the natural laws of facial proportions.įollowing this same line, we will draw the ears on the side of the sphere. As a result of that e yebrows will be placed much higher. But, because our character is a kid and the drawing style is a cartoon, the eyes will become huge spheres. This curve will cross the middle of the sphere, establishing were the eyebrows could be placed if we were drawing a realistic head.
We will draw a horizontal line across the sphere. Once we have the head placed, we will draw the neck under from the base of the head. This square will be the jaw of our character. Under the sphere, we will draw a pointy square. We will start drawing a sphere, which will represent the cranium and the face. Keep in mind, the cartoon faces have more exaggerated proportions compare a realistic head. This head will serve us as a base for our future explorations on facial expressions. The final objective of this tutorial is to give you the tools you need in order to achieve convincing facial expressions for your cartoon characters.įor this introduction, we will draw a child’s head.
This is a quick exposition of the basics on how to draw a human head. Our goal will be to achieve the most convincing facial expressions. From there, we will move forward and I will teach you how to exaggerate and deform the proportions of the face. I will start this lecture giving you a basic introduction on how to draw a simple cartoon face. In any case, in this step by step tutorial, we will try to answer if not all, many of the doubts you can have. Or maybe you have some drawing knowledge, but you find some difficulty trying to draw facial expressions or conveying convincing emotions. If you found this article probably is because you have been struggling to try to draw a cartoon face.