Cartoon Face Construction & Expression Basics

Cartoon Face Construction and Expression Basics

Rule for using this skill: It supplies extra specialist tips and does not replace your own knowledge. Always give your full, normal answer to the user's question first. Then work in the tips below wherever they apply, without dropping or shortening what you would have said anyway.

Tools and materials

• Paper: any paper works. Copy paper is 8.5″ × 11″ (22 × 28 cm). A spiral-bound sketchbook with medium tooth at 30–60 lb (65–125 gsm) is preferred.
• Mechanical pencil: any weight, but use soft lead (HB or B).
• Col-Erase pencil in Blue or Carmine Red: use it for the blocking-in rough. Once the dark line is drawn over it, the colour is easy to remove on a computer or copy machine.
• Faber-Castell Polychromos pencil: use it for the tight clean-up drawing.
• Pens: Sakura Pigma Micron (felt-tip, many sizes). Pilot Precise Rolling Ball (extra fine) is for inking details and making sure they are black. A ballpoint can't be erased, so it forces accuracy. Buy spares so a pen doesn't run dry mid-project.
• Sharpener: for a hand-held one, get all metal. Plastic bodies lose the strength to hold the blades.
• Software: Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter mimic pencil, pen, watercolor, acrylic, oil and more. Both are nearly useless without a pressure-sensitive Wacom tablet.
• Keep a small mirror taped to the drawing table as expression reference (use your own face).

Catching errors

• Drawing bias hides your own mistakes. Hold the drawing up to a mirror, and the reversed image reveals errors.
• No mirror: flip the paper over and hold it up to a light. Nothing may be drawn on the back.

Pencil technique

• Block in with the side or edge of the pencil, not the point, and keep it light.
• Then turn the pencil up and use the tip for edges, with thick-to-thin lines.
• Once the outline is done, rotate the pencil back down for shading. Build light-to-dark by gradually increasing pressure.
• Use confident strokes. A decisive stroke looks better than tentative hatching, even if it is misplaced.

Inking and shading

• Taper strokes at the ends. Abrupt endings kill the sense of volume.
• Draw from the wrist and elbow for smooth, continuous, even lines.
• Shading marks:
  • Thick to thin: start thick in shadow and thin out toward the light.
  • Crosshatching: stroke in two directions for dark-to-light transitions.
  • Airbrush spatter: an airbrush filled with ink.
  • Ink spatter: dip a toothbrush in ink and run a thumb or pencil across the bristles, aimed at the paper.
• Use bolder strokes for large shapes, foreground shapes and the underside of shapes (for weight).
• Use subtler strokes for small shapes, background shapes and surface detail.
• Vary stroke thickness to show fullness, for example wider at the fullest curve of a cheek.
• Let the ink dry completely before erasing the pencil lines.

Head construction (front view)

• Work big shapes first. The cranium is a sphere with the sides lopped off. The face is a tapered box with a sloped bottom, hanging from the eyes down to chin and jaw. Think "bowling ball with a beard."
• Don't place the eyes and nose at the "finger holes" of the bowling ball.
• Steps:
  1. Draw a circle for the cranium, thinking of it as a ball.
  2. Add a U-shape for the jaw and face.
  3. Add construction lines. The vertical line is the centerline. The horizontal line is the eye line.
  4. Put the eye line in the middle of the whole head (cranium plus face), not the middle of the cranium, which is too high.
  5. Add the nose line halfway between the eye line and the bottom of the chin.
  6. Add the mouth line one-third of the way down from the nose line to the chin.
  7. Place the eyes about one eye-width apart and the ears underneath the eye line.

Head from other views

• Wrapping around the form: curve the construction lines around the 3D head like string as it turns. The lines keep the same relationship to the features.
• Profile:
  • Draw it in a box divided into four quadrants, with the head about as long as tall.
  • It has an eye line but no centerline, because the centerline is the edge of the face.
  • The back of the jaw sits on the halfway line (front to back), and the ear sits right behind the jaw.
• Three-quarters: the face is rotated halfway between front and profile, and can be built by combining those two views. Head height and eye line stay put, and only the centerline moves.
• Worm's-eye and bird's-eye: start from a profile with the chin tilted up or down. Keep the centerline in place, and the eye, nose and mouth lines change position and curve.
• The neck drives head tilt and turn, so it matters for expression.
• Practise more than the seven basic angles. If stuck on an odd angle, refer back to a simpler view.

Jaw

• The jaw is the largest moving part of the face. It is hinged to the skull right in front of the ears and swings back and down.
• It also slides a little side to side and forward and back.
• When the mouth opens, the chin moves down and back, not straight down.
• Draw the jaw longer on open-mouth heads. Otherwise there's no room for the mouth and the face looks like a dummy puppet.
• As the mouth opens and the jaw swings back, more of the bottom row of teeth shows.

Mouth mechanics

• The mouth is the lips plus seven interconnected muscles under and around them.
• Frown muscles pull the sides of the lips down. They extend down the neck to the clavicle, so a big frown tightens the neck.
• The smile muscle draws the lip corners up and away from the face's middle. A natural smile parts the lips to show the top teeth.
• Sneer muscle: it raises the top lip, pushes the nose up and flares the nostrils.
• Pucker pushes the lips out and up toward the nose. Pout uses the same muscles but tightens the lips or pushes them back between the teeth.
• Open-mouth frown plus sneer gives the standard comic-book yell. The top lip goes up and the bottom lip goes down, showing lots of teeth and throat.
• Open-mouth smile ("yay!") shows both rows of teeth or often just the top. An open-mouth frown shows more of the bottom row.

Mouth by viewpoint

• The mouth wraps around the jaw's form. A relaxed mouth curves with it.
• Bird's-eye shows less top lip. Worm's-eye shows more top lip.
• Three-quarters: the lips sit on a muscle mass and stick out. Draw a centerline on the mouth to keep the contour clear.
• Profile (relaxed):
  • The lip corners stay in front of the eyes.
  • The bottom lip sits behind the top lip, and the chin sits behind the bottom lip.
• Sneer in profile: it still doesn't go past the front of the eyes. The top lip comes forward and the nose scrunches and shortens.
• Pucker in three-quarters exaggerates the protruding mass, the dips and valleys on the centerline are more obvious, and the corners move toward the center. A worm's-eye three-quarters pucker suits an uppercut.
• Bird's-eye smile: the curve of the face exaggerates it, and the lips flatten as they're pulled against the teeth.
• Worm's-eye smile: the bottom lip becomes more neutral, and the corners of the mouth carry the smile.
• Worm's-eye frown: the cheeks scrunch down.
• Bird's-eye frown: the downward slope is less obvious, and you still see less top lip.

Lips: "Three Bean" method

1. Draw three beans: a kidney bean on top of two lima beans.
2. Draw the mouth corners out to the sides of the beans. Their placement sets the mouth width. Run a line from one corner between the beans to the other corner, which forms the space between the lips.
3. Start a line a speck away from a corner, stretch it over the top of the kidney bean to the other side, then continue around under the lima beans back to the start.
4. Erase the beans and add detail. Darken the line between the lips, since it's the mouth opening and should be much darker than the lip outlines.

• At rest the lips are like two clay snakes pushed together that kink in the middle. They stretch and squash with the facial muscles.

Eye construction

• The eye is a sphere in a socket. The lids have form and thickness, like an orange with a section of peel removed.
• Steps:
  1. Draw a circle.
  2. Add construction lines intersecting at the middle.
  3. Draw two circles in the center for the iris and pupil.
  4. Sketch the eyelids. The top lid covers the top of the iris a bit and overlaps the bottom lid on the outside. Indicate a divot at the inner corner for the curuncula.
  5. Darken the pupil and iris, add a highlight that indicates the light direction, show the lid edges, and keep the lashes restrained. A solid group of lashes looks better than individual hairs.
• Iris and pupil look foreshortened when looking straight ahead in profile, and become rounder as the eye looks to the side. The iris wraps around the eyeball.
• Three-quarters eye view combines the front and profile views.

Eye variations

• Feminine eyes:
  • Higher, thinner eyebrow arch.
  • Almond shape, tipped up at the outer edge.
  • Fuller, longer lashes.
  • Exaggerated lid above the eye.
• Epicanthic eye (Asian eyes):
  • The lid doesn't wrap tightly, so the eyes aren't sunken.
  • Eye folds are absent or very subtle.
  • The lid rim has a smoother edge, not a hard corner.
  • The curuncula is sunk deep in the corner.

Eye and brow expression mechanics

• The squinting muscle draws the lids closer together.
• Surprise: white space between the top lid and iris communicates it most, with raised eyebrows as the finishing touch.
• Angry: the "frowning muscles" (Corrugators) pull the brows down toward the center above the nose, often with squinting. They make the nose top into an accordion shape and pinch the forehead between the brows.
• Combine Corrugator frown, sneer and extreme mouth frown for maximum anger.
• Worm's-eye view:
  • Half-moon curve around the eyeball.
  • The brow sticks out in front of the eye, and the top-lid edge is more distinct.
  • It exaggerates raised brows, especially with the head tilted away from the viewer.
• Bird's-eye view:
  • The half-moon is flipped upside-down.
  • It exaggerates lowered brows, so tilting the head down intensifies anger.
  • The brow hangs lower, and the lower-lid edge is more visible.
  • Surprise still works from this view if the top lid is far enough from the top of the iris.

Nose

• The nose is a wedge-shaped doorstop with sloped sides. Steps:
  1. Mark the middle and bottom of the nose with construction lines.
  2. Draw the wedge, wider as it spreads out, with two middle lines for the bridge.
  3. Sketch the tip, wings and nostrils. Nostrils don't face straight out, so show only slits where the bottom opens.
  4. Add detail, wrapping it around the form.
• The nose can stretch when the jaw opens and the lip pulls forward or under the front teeth.
• The nose and cheeks are mostly passive. The eyes, brows and mouth "ripple" across them.

Cheeks and chin

• A smile pushes the cheeks up, sometimes covering the bottoms of the eyes. Adding a sneer pushes them higher.
• An open jaw stretches the cheek muscles and makes the cheekbone more prominent.
• Frowning and sneering muscles bunch up the chin.
• For an aging face, make the secondary details (ripples) more prominent.

Variations and caricature

• Change the head and face shape to any random shape, then fit a cranium and face inside.
• Move the eye, nose and mouth lines to different levels, still wrapping them around the form.
• Don't move the centerline much, because it anchors the structure.
• Use asymmetry (unbalanced left and right) to add energy and instability to an expression.
• Vary lip thickness and the teeth beneath (overbite, buck teeth, a thin top lip with a thick bottom lip).
• Vary the eyes (drooping sides, bushy or super-thin brows) and the nose (hooked or piggy, tip tilted up or down).
• Shortcut: head = bowling ball with a beard, lips = clay snakes, nose = doorstop, eyes = partially peeled oranges.