Has anybody used the book "Anatomy of Facial Expressions"?
3yr
@pinkapricorn
Proko has an anatomy and a portraiture course but nothing for the anatomy of the head, especially when it relates to facial expression. So I went looking for outside resources. The book Anatomy of Facial Expressions looks promising but I'm wondering if anyone here has used it? Or if you learned your facial anatomy another way?
The link:
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1735039047/?coliid=I2L0D1NEUNYUW8&colid=3MVOZQXDOKDXC&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it#customerReviews
3yr
It's out of my price range. Looks interesting. I learned from the book "The artist's complete guide to facial expression" by Gary Faigin. Which is based on the Works of Dr. Paul Elkman.
I also did read Unmasking the face and also Darwin has a book on expressions too. They are very good to understand the subject, but for an artist's standpoint they lack images.
Nowadays I'm doing Aaron Blaise's course on expression. I like it a lot, but I don't know if everyone would like it.
3yr
looks like a really good book. The amazon reviews are high also. I may put it on my wish list. I studied from Paul Ekman's book Unmasking the Face which is not for drawing but for understanding how our faces show expressions very very quickly and other cool science about reading facial expressions. It's a fun side study at best. I will have to get our book for sure soon
@pinkapricorn
3yr
Interesting book. That Ekman one. I put it on my wishlist for consideration later.
3yr
I haven’t, but it looks interesting, and it’s one I told myself I would get eventually (but didn’t when I had it in my hands - also I was holding a Japanese copy). I wouldn’t say I have learned facial anatomy, but I had a wonderful course in uni with Marshall’s mentor who had us drawing skulls from a life sized plastic model we purchased and assembled. Then we added the muscles in plastic clay, and drew that. I had a portraiture course with Jason Seiler, and he did a wonderful job with the basics and nose. What looks good about the resource you found is that it focuses on facial expressions, so that’s dealing with the functionality of the anatomy in a way that is important to us. Beyond that I would also look into the materials for medical students as Stan did for preparing the course if I wanted to take a deeper dive. Given your skill set, you could create your own interactive facial anatomy teaching tool if you wanted to, I bet! Great topic! Keep us posted 😊
3yr
Second reply because I grabbed some examples of what I'm talking about. I cloze out whatever structures I either don't know the name or I'm slow at recalling it. Stuff I know well I don't bother.
Two sets of:
1. original scan
2. front of card
3. back of card
Edit: If anybody spots errors let me know. I can still edit these files.
3yr
Yeah I spend quite a bit of time in medical anatomy resources. A life goal of mine since like 2003 has been to "master" dog and horse anatomy (be able to identify pretty much any structure in the big, thick anatomy books) and become decent with human anatomy (I'll be satisfied with just clinical-level). I've finally got a good system going for thoroughly learning dog anatomy and it's going so well and I know I'm gonna make it to my goal this time because I have a great, sustainable study process that is extremely effective. So I'm thinking ahead to the other anatomy boxes I wanna check, so to speak, during the course of my life and what the resources are that could get me there. I don't wanna just be able to point to a structure and regurgitate a name. I wanna draw that sucker too haha. Along with all of its homies lol (E.g. drawing the deltoid with the triceps and trapezius and latissimus dorsi)
And yeah I make a lot of my own resources. I've been scanning images out of my dog anatomy books, putting the scans in photoshop and I've turned them into coloring books where I get on the cintiq and color each structure a different color. And then I use the Image Occlusion addon for Anki to make flash cards where each one asks me the name of a structure structure and I get immediate feedback if I was right or not. And the Anki algorithm has spaced repetition that keeps track of how difficult each card is for me and shows me the ones I struggled with more than the ones that are easy. So I get the most memorization for the least amount of effort.
But don't get me wrong it's still a lot of effort especially since I make my own resources... but I've been wanting this for almost 18 years now. I pride myself on being an amateur anatomist even though nobody else in my life gives a shit haha I still feel like I'm cool. Because anatomy is cool 😂
And that's neat about adding muscles with clay to a skull. I wanna do that. You're building a face from the frame up!!
Show all replies (7)
