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When it comes to drawing portraits, emotions are what breathe life to the faces that we draw. Without them, our drawings would be dead and flat. In order to portray emotions convincingly, we must be familiar with the facial expressions that comprise them.

Fortunately, most of the heavy lifting of this task has been done for us. Researches have discovered that there are 6 universal emotional expressions that re common in all of us. And the details of these expressions have also been well documented.

This information is tremendously useful for the portrait drawing artists and in my attempt to learn how to draw people faces; I’ve sought out Dr. Ekman’s books. In this article, I’d like to share with you the six universal expressions and the traits that distinguish them. You can use this knowledge to learn how to draw people faces.

Surprise: The eyebrows are raised, the eyes are opened wide, and the jaw drops open, parting the lips. The lifting of the eyebrows produces long horizontal wrinkles across the forehead. The important thing to remember about surprise is that the face is not tense; the upper and lower eyelids are relaxed and the mouth just hangs open without any tension. This will be important in distinguishing surprise from fear.

Fear: This expression is similar to surprise in that they mouth and eyes are also open. But the key difference here is that fear carries a lot of tension in the face. An expression of fear is not very pleasant to look at.

Disgust: The most important features of disgust are in the mouth and nose. Regarding the mouth, the upper lip is raised, while the lower lip may be raised or lowered. The nose is wrinkled causing lines to appear on the sides and bridge of the nose. The more intense the disgust, the more these wrinkles will be apparent.

Anger: The main features of anger are that the eyebrows are drawing tightly together. The nostrils flare and there is a lot of tension in the mouth.

Joy: Joy is expressed though a smile or a laugh. The corners of the mouth are drawn back and up. This pushes the cheeks up and causes the eyes to appear smaller. One very important feature of the smile is that there will be wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, also known as “crow’s feet”. The absent of these wrinkles are usually a very reliable sign that the smile is not genuine. This tiny detail will go along way to helping you with how to draw a realistic face.

Sadness; In sadness the face droops downward. The eyebrows are drawn together and up. Although sometimes sadness can also be express by a complete lack of expression.

If you combine your understanding of these 6 emotional expressions with a good knowledge of the facial muscles that lies underneath, you will go very far in mastering human facial drawings and how to draw realistic people|drawing and drawing faces.

To learn about how to drawing realistic eyes simply surf over to my siteand check out all the FREE lessons that I’ve created there. You’ll learn things like how to draw people and much more.