How to Draw Expressions | 01 |

Drawing a Neutral Expression

Here’s a look at what you’ll be learning in this how to draw expressions first video lesson.  To start off this series you will be covering the neutral expression. This is the default expression you will be using to modify and create all of the other expressions in this online drawing course.

 

Putting it All Together

We’ll keep this lesson a little light on instruction because you’ll just be going through and creating a face from the previous lessons on drawing the face.  Here you can see the basic proportions of the face and if you need a quick refresher, here’s a list of how to get the different proportions:

• Start with the outline of the head
• Divide the head in half both vertically and horizontally
• Divide the distance of the eye line (vertical middle of the head) and the chin in half to get the height of the nose
• Divide the height of the chin to the nose in half to get the mouth line

 

Because this lesson is going to cover expressions, it’s not necessary to really get into detail with the individual features. Keep reminding yourself that the main goal here is to learn how to modify the features and learn how to draw facial expressions.

if you are unfamiliar with drawing these parts of the face you can view the full lessons for each section here:

• How to Draw Eyes
• How to Draw a Nose
• How to Draw a Mouth
• How to Draw Hair
• How to Draw Ears

The Finished Neutral Expression Drawing

This is how the finished neutral expression drawing looks. The eyes and mouth should remain in a neutral pose. This means that the eyelids and eyebrows are going to sit naturally on top of the eyeball. You will be modifying them in later lessons, but for now, think of them as being ‘at rest,’ without any modification done to them.

The other main feature here is the mouth, and to keep it simple it’s been drawn with an almost completely straight line. It does curve up a little at the corners of the mouth, and there is a little bit of shading at the corners to indicate the depth of the lips, but that’s about it for the mouth and lips.

In the next how to draw expressions video you’re going to be looking at how to draw a happy expression.

Return to the How to Draw Expressions Lessons Page