Domestika Challenge: Draw Keanu Reeves’ Many Facial Expressions in 5 Minutes

Can character designer Laura Ewing illustrate Keanu Reeves’ many emotions in 5 minutes?

The face is one of the most expressive parts of the body, which is why understanding how to illustrate believable facial expressions is a key skill for any character designer.

Laura Ewing (@le_lauraewing) is a storyboard artist and character designer whose job it is to capture the essence of a story quickly and convincingly for films, documentaries, and publishing houses.

We challenged Laura to imagine and illustrate actor Keanu Reeves’ face expressing different emotions, using surprise prompts ranging from “just won an Oscar” to “just got fired” via “too much coffee”.

See how she did below:

If you want to learn more about how to reveal your character’s personality by working on a concept and illustrating it using Photoshop, check out Laura Ewing’s Domestika course Character Creation for Animation: Shapes, Color, and Expression.

You may also like:

- Digital Painting for Characters: Color and Light, a course by Joel Santana
- Character Design for Animation with Photoshop, a course by Caio Martins
- Cartoon-Style Character Design with Procreate, a course by Ed Vill