How to Draw a Character to Represent an Emotion

Capturing emotions adds realism to your drawings.

Drawing the human form challenges an artist's powers of observation and replication. Once you have the basic ideas of proportion and anatomy, remember that people rarely stand in a rigid posture. We are emotional creatures, and our emotions affect our posture, body language and facial expressions. Learning to draw a character that represents an emotion will expand your artistic repertoire.

Things You'll Need

• Pencil
• Paper
• Kneaded rubber eraser
• Pen (optional)
• Colored pencils, markers, or paint (optional)
• Spray fixative (optional)

Instructions

1. Pick an emotion to portray. Think beyond just happiness or sadness: Choose to draw jealousy, giddiness, rage, or remorse. Choosing a specific emotion will give your piece direction and depth.

2. Decide on the scope of the picture. Will this be a head-and-shoulders portrait or a full body pose? Portraits allow you to focus more on the facial expressions, but you can also draw the posture of the whole body to express emotion.

3. Lightly sketch the preliminary forms with a pencil. Use circles for joints and lines for bones. If you're drawing a full body pose, consider the effect of the emotion on the posture: A depressed person will have slumped shoulders, a bowed head, and listless limbs. An angry person will be tense all over, with rigid posture and clenched fists.

4. Draw in facial features. Many emotional cues come from the position of the eyes, eyebrows, and mouth, which then affect the rest of the facial muscles. Practice making different faces in the mirror, and use what you have seen to create a realistic expression.

5. Add more details to the original outline. Flesh out the form with clothing, hair and background details. Do not to press too hard with the pencil; light pencil marks are easier to erase.

6. Shade in shadows using the side of the pencil, and lift out highlights by pressing lightly with the kneaded rubber eraser. If desired, ink the outline or add color with markers, colored pencils or paint.

7. Erase any unwanted lines and sign your work. Spray the drawing with fixative.

References

• Lackadaisy: Lackadaisy Expressions
• Dani Draws: 50 Facial Expressions and How to Create Them