Faces & Feelings

Here is something amazing: with one circle, two dots, and two little lines, you can draw every feeling a person can feel. Happy, sad, surprised, sleepy, grumpy — they are all written on the face in a secret code. The code has just two letters: the EYEBROWS and the MOUTH. Change those two things and the same face tells a completely different story.

Now let's flip the code. For a sad or worried face, the mouth turns upside down — but the real magic is in the eyebrows: they tilt UP in the middle, like a little roof over the nose. Try making the face yourself in a mirror: when you feel worried, your eyebrows really do scrunch up in the middle! Artists steal everything from mirrors.

Surprise is the easiest feeling of all, because everything on the face goes WIDE OPEN. The eyes become big circles, the eyebrows fly up as high as they can go, and the mouth drops into a tall O — as if the face is saying WOW. Comic artists even add little lines around the head, like the surprise is jumping off the skin.

Ready for a real portrait? Then you need the artist's most surprising secret: on a real face, the eyes are NOT near the top of the head. They sit exactly HALFWAY down. Everyone draws them too high at first, because we pay so much attention to eyes that they feel bigger and higher than they are. Measure your own face in a mirror — halfway. Truly!

Now you own the feelings code: eyebrows plus mouth equals emotion, and the halfway rule keeps faces looking real. Try drawing the same face four times with four different feelings — same circle, same eyes, different eyebrows and mouth. That little exercise is exactly how comic artists practise their characters.