Member Reviews
A fantastic book for intermediate and advanced artists that will help improve your portrait drawings. Going from the basics to complex expressions, and including every age group, this is an excellent guide and reference book. The artist's drawings are incredibly detailed and a great inspiration. Highly recommend.
Definitely not for beginners, but a good guide for advance artists. I will definitely come back to it once I get more basics on drawing faces.
The book and drawings themselves are absolutely stunning. However I find that there aren't a lot of instructions in there although it is marketed that way. There are a lot of examples and inspiration, but I wouldn't categorize it as instructional. I own Stephan Bauman's Portraiture book and I find that that would be a better if you're looking for exercises on how to improve your drawing. There are examples of basic anatomy, but in order to learn proper emotions and expressions, you need to learn how to draw all the facial muscles and how they change with each expression.
Stunning book, buy it if you like the style of the artist, but be aware it's more of a portfolio of the artist.
Thanks to NetGalley, I was able to read a digital ARC of Facial Expressions for Artists by Oliver Sin.
The book begins with a short preface of the importance of anatomy, and then dives right into the five chapters covering the skull and essential muscles of the head, anatomy of the eye, anatomy of the ear, mouth and nose, expressions and the ageing face, and finally capturing expressions. It ends with a four-page index.
This book is dense with text and beautiful drawings. Covering facial anatomy in-depth and with clarity, it's a book to return to time and time again, but it's absolutely not aimed at beginners. Confident artists who want to level up their portraits should immediately buy a copy and devour it, they won't regret it.
I'm buying a copy upon publication and will study it to the best of my ability, but in truth this is more of an inspirational and aspirational work for me right now. Meanwhile, I'll be returning to Sin's previous book, "Drawing The Head For Artists" which is also fantastic but a little more accessible for my level.
Oliver Sin is a talented artist, and this book is filled with numerous examples of his work, used largely to illustrate what he's explaining. His ability to capture faces is impressive and it can be hard to imagine you could ever achieve such beautiful and accurate work. He has a very particular style however, which is consistent throughout, and while one might be inspired by the creations of others, it's important to work to your own style and motivations.
This book spends the first half describing the anatomy of the face in an easy to understand way, but is comprehensive and clear. The next quarter is dedicated to depicting emotions, again in an accurate and reasonably comprehensive way. Not all the illustrations represent the emotion being described, but that in itself is interesting as it causes you to explore why you're reading a face in a particular way, and what elements are different from what is being described. The latter part of the book describes the elements of faces from babyhood to old age in good detail.
Overall a helpful, interesting and well presented book. And if you like Oliver Sin's work you will have a volume of them to explore and enjoy.
*Facial Expressions for Artists* by Oliver Sin is an essential guide for anyone looking to capture authentic emotion and individuality in their artwork. Sin, a celebrated portrait artist and instructor, breaks down the mechanics of facial expression, from the underlying skull and muscles to how they manifest in the planes of the face. This book covers a broad spectrum of emotions, from subtle anxiety and irritation to more intense expressions like exuberance and despair. Featuring models of all ages, ethnicities, and facial types, this guide provides valuable insights for artists at all skill levels, whether you're creating portraits or character-driven stories. A perfect addition to the *For Artists* series, this book helps artists develop the skills needed to draw realistic, expressive faces.
What a fantastic reference for artists! I had never really considered the anatomy of a head before painting, I'd just "had a go" at painting/ life drawing, but this book has taught me how to see each part as simplified shapes and how to tackle dodger ethnicities and agrees of face. A brilliant book which I will be buying as a hard copy for future reference.
I’ve read one of this author’s books on art and drawing the human head before which was really interesting and helpful so I had quite high hopes for this latest book. Happily, I can confirm it is just as useful an instructional as I’d hoped. It is an absolutely fascinating look at human facial expressions and the different ways to evoke these emotions through drawing. I think it will be an invaluable resource in my future artwork. Facial Expressions For Artists is a beautiful, creative and full of helpful information on musculature, dimension and perspective. Highly recommended.
Facial Expressions for Artists is a great resource that guides the early-level artists with its step by step approach starting with basic anatomy (face and skull specific).
The sample faces, sketches/portraits in this book cover a wide range of faces (different ages, facial expressions, facial anatomies, etc.).
Thanks to above, we have a much-needed book for artists that is both inspiring and accessible informative.
The faces in this book are very diverse in age and race, so I think it would be useful as a reference for artists learning the differences between various faces. I also like how there are chapter break downs of the portions of the head and face with multiple examples for each one. It is clear that Oliver Sin is a very talented artist who aims to assist other artists in portrait drawing. This would be a great reference to refer back to for guidance and simply inspiration.