Balancing Detail

Drawing facial extremes can be a difficulty for any artist, the face stretches and squashes in a bunch of weird ways and it can be difficult to get the emotions across without making the faces look too strange.

It's "the teeth effect". The idea that sure, in a photo of someone, you may see every single tooth in their mouth, but if you try drawing every line in a row of teeth, your portrait is going to look satanic. You need only the suggestion of teeth, a few lines here and there. So when drawing a super expressive face, you need to apply the same method. The suggestion of the expression, not every crinkle and line on the person's face.

Recently, I decided to take on some expressive faces to draw as a way to practice this. I tend to err on the side of caution and draw straight-faced or slight-smile portraits but as an artist, you have to keep pushing your own limit. I took some singing characters from my most recent obsession and went to work.

In my reference images for these two characters, there are a lot of facial details going on here. Andrew in the full "I Believe" belt has a very powerful and kind of strained look to it. Nikki, also at the peak of a song, has her arms reaching above her head. There is lot here that I left out. But there's a fine line between making an expression look simplified and making it look like not the expression at all. I've seen some artists be a little too cautious when it comes to drawing expressions and then end up making a screaming face look like someone merely talking. On the flipside, I've seen artists give too much detail and their portraits end up looking like Norma Bates.

When it came to these characters, I drew a few lines here and there but a lot of work should put onto the shading and lighting of the piece. Subtle changes in light and shadow help in defining the parts of the face that are being exaggerated without making them look crazy. This is where thinking of your subject as a 3D object really comes into play, think of how cheeks round out when you smile or how lips stretch thin with an open mouth. Thinking of a body in terms of 3D will help with creating realistic shading that helps sell the expression.

Colored lines also help in softening their harshness on a portrait. Recently, I stopped using lineart on the outside of a figure altogether simply because it make the figure look too cartoony and not like they were a part of their environment. It just wasn't the style I was going for.

The key to steering clear of "the teeth effect" is to simply use your best judgement. Don't take your reference as gospel, in most cases, we're not copying the image line for line. Use your reference more as a jumping off point.

Now go out and create something awesome and hey don't forget to have fun.