Review: Drawing Facial Expressions by Gary Faigin (Craftsy course)

This is the third video course from Gary Faigin can be seen as a natural continuation of his earlier two, namely Draw Better Portraits and Drawing Facial Features.

The subject is still portraits and now it focuses on facial expressions from emotions, specifically surprise & fear, sadness, anger, disgust and joy. If you've watched Pixar's movie Inside Out, yeah, it's the same five emotions.

The whole course runs for 148 minutes and covers the expressions in almost equal emphasis except for the part on smiles which is given more time.

Much of the content is from his book The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression. The book has more content actually and goes into more details on the muscles and has much more examples. So if you want a reference, it will be good to get the book. Other than that, the only difference is in presentation, one's a book and the other a video.

In addition to being a drawing course. I find that it can actually double up as a course on reading body language. You'll get to learn why certain muscles do what they do in response to different emotions. You can also learn to tell a fake smile from a real smile. From an artistic perspective, it's helpful to know how to improve your portraits by playing up certain features on the face to make your portrait more convincing.

Gary Faigin is a good instructor and teaches in a fun manner. The course content is insightful and entertaining in some ways. Instructions are simple to follow and concepts are easy to grasp. It's a helpful course for artists or beginners who are into portrait drawing.

Check out more reviews and enrol in the course on Craftsy. Craftsy has extended a 50% discount to Parka Blogs readers until 23 Sep 2015.

Disclosure: This course was provided to me by Craftsy for review purposes. You can support Parka Blogs by using the affiliate links as I get a little commission from each sale. :-)