Book Review: The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression

This book should be a compulsory book for all artists, all those that draw faces anyway.

It's a in-depth instructional art book on facial expressions. The three main sections are on head structure, facial muscles and the six basic human emotions: sadness, anger, joy, fear, disgust and surprise. Every little nuance or muscle twitch on the face is analysed and explained. Other than the drawings created by the author Gary Faigin himself, there are also tons of examples included from other media like posters, cartoons, etc.

The write-up is really exhaustive and interesting. You'll find out why smiling too much hurts, the differences between a sleepy eye and one that's looking down and a whole lot more. It's not only useful for drawing, but also very practical in real life with the new found ability to differentiate real from fake expressions — reading faces.

I can't recommend this book highly enough.

5 out of 5 stars.

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