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| Facial Expressions: A Visual Reference for Artists | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Simon
Publisher: Watson-Guptill
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy New: $12.64
You Save: $9.31 (42%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  45 reviews
Sales Rank: 8302
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 10.4 x 9 x 0.9
ISBN: 0823016714
Dewey Decimal Number: 704.942
EAN: 9780823016716
ASIN: 0823016714
Publication Date: June 1, 2005
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Product Description
All artists are tired of persuading their nearest and dearest to look sadlook gladlook madmadderno, even madderokay, hold it. For those artists (and their long-suffering friends), here is the best book ever. Facial Expressions includes more than 2,500 photographs of 50 facesmen and women of a variety of ages, shapes, sizes, and ethnicitieseach demonstrating a wide range of emotions and shown from multiple angles. Who can use this book? Oh, only every artist on the planet, including art students, illustrators, fine artists, animators, storyboarders, and comic book artists. But wait, theres more! Additional photos focus on people wearing hats and couples kissing, while illustrations show skull anatomy and facial musculature. Still not enough? How about a one-of-a-kind series of photos of lips pronouncing the phonemes used in human speech? Animators will swoonand artists will show a range of facial expressions from happy to happiest to ecstatic.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 40 more reviews...
 Not bad, but too over-the-top June 10, 2007
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
This book has it's uses. It is organized by the age of the model, and varies from 20 to 83, both male and female. The pictures are clear and usable, and I was pleased that they were large enough to work with. Note that these are head-shots only. Then at the end of the book, there is a brief section on "sequential poses" which basically gives you some still frames in transitions between for example a happy and sad face. There is also a few pages on models speaking the phonemes if you need to do morphing.
The problem that I have with this book though is that, like others mentioned, WAY too many of the expressions are these really outrageous over-the-top kinds of things. I guess you could best describe them as "silly". If you are doing some type of animated cartoon or something, these might actually be real useful. But for any other use they are not nearly as much help as they could be.
For comparison's sake, I also have "The Artist's Complete Guide To Facial Expression" which I feel is a little more useful. It is organized by expression, and contains a lot of discussion about each one. The weakness of that book though is that it doesn't have near as much reference material (i.e. pictures) as this book, but at least the ones it does have are in general more useful.
 All the facial reference you need in one book May 6, 2005
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
Capturing a person's expression is often the key to a successful illustration. Sometimes you have to translate your own features from a reflection and apply them to the face you're drawing. This book alleviates a lot of guesswork and opens up scores of options with the variety of kinds of faces included, the range of distrortion the models allow, and the multitude of angles from which we see the faces. What's great about the collection is it isn't just faces, it's the other details that can sometimes present challenges, from hairstyles to types of shirts and collars, to a specific section devoted to various hats and headgear. All these seemingly obvious things are necessary to include at one time or another, and can present challenges to an artist. Just a sliver of the possible interpretations are included in the book as well, as several artists have contributed sketches based on the actual photos you see. Caricatures, animal characters, sculptures, it goes on and on.
I see this as one of the few staple books for any artist to keep on their shelf, that covers a broad ground within a single volume.
It's really the best *right now*- get it while it's in-print... July 11, 2006
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
This is currently the best and most cost-effective photo reference for heads, features, faces, expressions, angles, and different ethnicities, genders, and ages available today *in-print*. A great price & above-average quality- it's pretty easily worth getting. See also his 2nd book: Babies to Teens.
Some ideas for next edition- mainly my own preferences: more younger models- less older; white pages with white backgrounds- instead of grey pages with black backgrounds; get rid of the skull sections; get rid of the 'art inspired by' amateur art; get rid of the sequential expressions section; expand the kissing section- younger models please; and give us more of the model on pages 234-235! :)
Some of the criticisms here by others really amaze me(!). This is the *only* book of its kind available today- there's simply no competition. Sure, other photo references exist, but none with this specific content. Where else can we find so many expressions, ethnicities, and extreme angles of view? This is a tremendous help in learning to draw heads from memory. Combine this with some of the better how-to-draw type books, and it's hard to find a better value these days. Photo-reference books can sometimes be expensive!
It's unfortunate but true: some of the *greatest* photo reference books ever created seemed to quickly go out of print. Sometimes they popped back into print; sometimes they didn't. The Illustrator's Figure Reference Manual series is a great example of this, as is the Elte Shuppan Pose File series (currently a 9-volume series). Awareness seems key to their survival. It's just a simple reality: these books are intended for a very special & specific audience, and if demand for these books fades, even for the briefest of times, these books go out-of-print & then often become extremely expensive to get. I've written a few reviews for these out-of-print books, but happily *this* book is still available today. Get it while it's in-print!
Also recommended: Andrew Loomis' Drawing: The Head; George Bridgman's Constructive Anatomy & Heads, Features and Faces; Jack Hamm's Drawing the Head and Figure; Burne Hogarth's Dynamic Anatomy & Drawing the Human Head; and even How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. Check 'em out!
An excellent reference! June 14, 2006
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
'Facial Expressions' is an excellent reference book for artists who want to practise drawing and sketching the human face, enlivened by any number of evocative expressions. I am using it to improve my figure drawing, and to give the anthro characters I like to try and draw some life... it's great for that!
The models cover a huge cross section, ranging from around 20 to the late 70's, both male and female. The expressions cover a wide range also, and there are more than enough angles to get the pose down.
If you're a developing artist - like me - who struggles with the expressive human face - and particularly if you want to do anthro or furry art - I think this book is a must!
Deficient and not as good as some other books on the subject July 19, 2005
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
Every artist should have a facial expression book on the shelf--but maybe not this one. The most baffling deficiency of this book--and it's a biggie--is that the faces are organized by age, not emotion!! Maybe someone can convince me that a 33-year-old face differs from a 34-year-old face in displaying emotion and that should be the basis of organization in this kind of reference book. So each age-identified model gets a gallery of random mug shots which are unlabeled to emotion. Apparently the author "inspired" each model with a laundry list of emotions and they twisted their faces this-way-and-that before the camera and you can make of the results what you will. So if you need a quick facial reference for "thinking" or "rage," for example, you have to thumb through countless pages until YOU believe you've spotted the correct visage. The author then throws in a "kissing gallery" out of the blue as the only pages on two-person interaction. (Why not a "fist-fight gallery" instead?) What maybe salvages this haphazard work is the phonemes gallery of mouth shapes from speech sounds if you're into animation. For better books on this subject, I recommended, first off, the great Stephen Roger Peck's Atlas Of Facial Expressions. Peck not only organizes his book by emotion, he elaborates on the elements that go into each facial expression. Also worthwhile is Illustrator's Reference Manual Hands & Faces which presents the material in color and from different perspectives. And you can never go wrong with Jack Hamm who covers the subject in his typically succint and understandable way in Cartooning The Head And Figure.
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