Learn how to draw anime face expressionsAfter you learned how to draw manga faces a couple of days ago, it’s now time for more tips about how to draw anime faces. In the next paragraphs you will learn how the various parts of the face work together to convey different emotions. Once you learn what features to change to achieve the look you want, you should be able to draw any anime face expression you want.

    Every anime/manga face sketch starts with a circle. It could be round or more or less oval. In this circle, you draw a cross, a guideline that will help you place face elements. You will then position the eyes, nose, mouth, etc and they will determine the face expression.

    Anime face expressions

    The most important factor for the expression of a character is the eye, with the eyelid and the eyebrow. Its shape can help you convey different emotions, from happiness to anger, while the size of the iris is important too. The mouth also helps determine the mood of the character. In the next examples you’ll see exactly how.

    Anime face expression: sadness

    Very big eyes, eyelids angled upwards towards the center of the face, very large irises, a couple of tears in the cornet of the eyes and a small mouth slightly opened and curved downwards are the elements that indicate a sad face. As you can see in the picture below.

    Sadness

    Anime face expression: angriness

    There are a couple of ways for drawing an angry anime face. You could use a big shouting mouth, big eyes with big irises and eyebrows curved down sharply. This character is mad and is screaming at someone.

    The second approach is different, showing a character very angry and ticked off. The eyebrows are very close to the eyes, still curved down sharply. The mouth is closed, the eyes and irises are a lot smaller. And you can even see the folds in the skin caused by the eyebrows being so knitted.

    Angriness

    Anime face expression: happiness

    Happiness is suggested by very big eyes, highly arched eyebrows pointing downwards and a very big smiling mouth, usually opened. You can see some examples in the pictures.

    Happiness

    Anime face expression: surprised

    To show a surprised or astonished face you need to make the eyes incredibly big, but very very small irises. The mouth is usually small and round and the eyes are kind of highly arched.

    Surprised

    There are lots of other types off faces, but the examples above should help you get started. If you’re looking for tips on how to draw other emotions too, please study the pictures below or read some of the tips from here. 

    Lots of faces

    Lots of faces 

    The pictures are from Deviantart.

    That’s about it for this lesson of drawing face expressions for anime faces. In the next episode, we’ll show you a couple of tips for drawing anime children faces.