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Description
Not your average tutorial. It started off as a practice for me, but I thought other people could learn some tips from this. But please note that these are my techniques and you should always stick to what works with your style (nothing wrong with trying things out, but if your methods work better than mine, then ignore me because I'm a crackpot )

Anyway, onto the tutorial...

1. Eyes show a lot of emotion on their own. Even without the eyebrows, you should take into consideration the size of the iris and pupil, as well as the position of the eye and how it squints/contorts with the face. In the bottom left example, the eye is almost closed, with lots of wrinkles above, below, and a few at the side. The one on the bottom right has a very large iris and pupil which makes for a 'whimpering' look. Experiment and you should find the right look you want.

2. Mouths are often overlooked in expressions. There's the typical and mouths but in reality there is so much more. All these mouths show emotion/attitude in them. If you like, you can draw out all those mouths and draw an expression that you think matches each one. Again, experiment, and look at how mouths look in real life. I don't put huge detail into lips, but that doesn't mean you can't.

3. Something I do to get the general idea for an expression down. I draw a very simple chibi style expression to get the idea of what the eyes/eyebrows/mouth will look like and work from there. I only did a couple of basic expressions here, and then a couple of more complex ones.

4. Simple enough. Eyebrow practice. How different eyebrows work on the same eye.

5. This is another simple one. The eyes are all relatively the same, but with different amounts of shine in them. Moderate shine, big, very big, small, and no shine at all. You can also add a second shine at a different angle or something, I just forgot to include that. Experiment with different amounts of shine to get the effect you want.

6. Matt Groening (sorry if I spelled his name wrong ), writer of The Simpsons and Futurama, doesn't use eyebrows at all. He sticks with a more cartoony style with no eyebrows at all. Personally, I wouldn't dream of drawing a person without eyebrows, but Groening manages to portray some good emotions without them by altering the shape of the eye and such. I didn't use his style, obviously, but I experimented on how to show emotions in eyes without the aid of eyebrows. Try it out, if you use it subtly and add eyebrows on, you can get some pretty intense expressions for your characters.

7. Nothing special, just a bunch of expressions. I purposely tried to make them more subtle, as opposed to the typical OTT expressions that seem to go hand in hand with the anime style. To be honest, just the slightest twitch of an eyebrow can tell you someone is annoyed, the tiniest curl of a lip shows they're worried and one tiny downward glance can show their sadness. Subtlety can sometimes have more impact than you might think. Give it a try.

8. Finally, my main practice, and I cannot stress this enough: DIFFERENT CHARACTERS HAVE DIFFERENT EXPRESSIONS. Two people look different with the same expression. All these characters are happy, but they have different ways of showing it. The same goes for every expression. It all comes down to personality and physical facial features. If you have one character who is very shy and one who is very outgoing and brash, they will likely look very different when they're angry. It's the same emotion, they just look different.

Think about it: when you look angry, do you look the same as all your friends when they're angry? With me, my eyebrows go lower and closer together, my lower eyelids squint up a little and my lower lip curls in and makes my mouth look higher up. With my friend, her eyebrows stay pretty much where they are, and go closer together, her eyes squint a lot, and her lips go in to an almost pucker. Very different, but we can both tell when the other is angry, regardless.

So, like everyone says (they're not lying, I swaer!), practice, draw from life, experiment and practice some more!

Description
Not your average tutorial. It started off as a practice for me, but I thought other people could learn some tips from this. But please note that these are my techniques and you should always stick to what works with your style (nothing wrong with trying things out, but if your methods work better than mine, then ignore me because I'm a crackpot )

Anyway, onto the tutorial...

1. Eyes show a lot of emotion on their own. Even without the eyebrows, you should take into consideration the size of the iris and pupil, as well as the position of the eye and how it squints/contorts with the face. In the bottom left example, the eye is almost closed, with lots of wrinkles above, below, and a few at the side. The one on the bottom right has a very large iris and pupil which makes for a 'whimpering' look. Experiment and you should find the right look you want.

2. Mouths are often overlooked in expressions. There's the typical and mouths but in reality there is so much more. All these mouths show emotion/attitude in them. If you like, you can draw out all those mouths and draw an expression that you think matches each one. Again, experiment, and look at how mouths look in real life. I don't put huge detail into lips, but that doesn't mean you can't.

3. Something I do to get the general idea for an expression down. I draw a very simple chibi style expression to get the idea of what the eyes/eyebrows/mouth will look like and work from there. I only did a couple of basic expressions here, and then a couple of more complex ones.

4. Simple enough. Eyebrow practice. How different eyebrows work on the same eye.

5. This is another simple one. The eyes are all relatively the same, but with different amounts of shine in them. Moderate shine, big, very big, small, and no shine at all. You can also add a second shine at a different angle or something, I just forgot to include that. Experiment with different amounts of shine to get the effect you want.

6. Matt Groening (sorry if I spelled his name wrong ), writer of The Simpsons and Futurama, doesn't use eyebrows at all. He sticks with a more cartoony style with no eyebrows at all. Personally, I wouldn't dream of drawing a person without eyebrows, but Groening manages to portray some good emotions without them by altering the shape of the eye and such. I didn't use his style, obviously, but I experimented on how to show emotions in eyes without the aid of eyebrows. Try it out, if you use it subtly and add eyebrows on, you can get some pretty intense expressions for your characters.

7. Nothing special, just a bunch of expressions. I purposely tried to make them more subtle, as opposed to the typical OTT expressions that seem to go hand in hand with the anime style. To be honest, just the slightest twitch of an eyebrow can tell you someone is annoyed, the tiniest curl of a lip shows they're worried and one tiny downward glance can show their sadness. Subtlety can sometimes have more impact than you might think. Give it a try.

8. Finally, my main practice, and I cannot stress this enough: DIFFERENT CHARACTERS HAVE DIFFERENT EXPRESSIONS. Two people look different with the same expression. All these characters are happy, but they have different ways of showing it. The same goes for every expression. It all comes down to personality and physical facial features. If you have one character who is very shy and one who is very outgoing and brash, they will likely look very different when they're angry. It's the same emotion, they just look different.

Think about it: when you look angry, do you look the same as all your friends when they're angry? With me, my eyebrows go lower and closer together, my lower eyelids squint up a little and my lower lip curls in and makes my mouth look higher up. With my friend, her eyebrows stay pretty much where they are, and go closer together, her eyes squint a lot, and her lips go in to an almost pucker. Very different, but we can both tell when the other is angry, regardless.

So, like everyone says (they're not lying, I swaer!), practice, draw from life, experiment and practice some more!