How to Draw Cartoon Expressions

Master how to draw cartoon expressions with our step-by-step guide. Learn to create smiles, sadness, and more with simple lines and body language!

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There is a huge range of eyes, mouths, noses, ears, chins to choose from. You can start by imitating the people around you. Just remember to be kind with their portrayal, and if kindness is not your forte, at least deny any similarities, when confronted about it.

But you might want to draw attention to your art... Then you need to master facial expressions! Draw them with the emotion they will "express facially" when finding your portrayal of them hidden in their drawer.

In this pursuit you will need a guide to remind you how the mouth interacts with the eyes or the shoulders impact the over all body language, for example. Unless you are one of those people that make silly faces in the mirror for fun... Then you should know all of this perfectly well...!

But let's assume you are not a stereotypical superhero villain with identity issues for now:

Where Do I Start?

You might need a character design first of all, unless you are delighted drawing emojis your phone can produce way faster than you. Your phone can also produce realistic faces faster, anyways... So, who cares?

Now that you downloaded the .pdf and .mp4 hidden in the .zip above, you should have a basic understanding of facial expressions in drawings but if you are lacking a character to express these emotions, here is a list of even more guides you will surely benefit from checking out:

Basic Proportions of a Face:

Learn how to make a guide for the basic proportions of a face with Carlos Rodríguez Casado (@carlosrodriguezcasado). Click here!

Eye Structure:

Discover an intuitive tutorial & illustrations by Alina Cuiedan (@alinacuiedan) that will leave you wide-eyed! Click here!

How to Draw Lips:

Follow Cristina Gómez (@adesignerlife) in this article and you will find not one but two step by step tutorials that uncover two different approaches to drawing lips. Click here!

Do you ever ask yourself: Who am I beneath all these facial expressions?

Perhaps what you are searching for is more than the 5000+ Domestika courses can give you... No way!

- Join our drawing courses
- Easy things to draw
- How to draw realistic lips An article by Cristina Gómez