This time, on Steph’s blog…
Expressions: Muscle Anatomy and the Seven Basic Expressions.
Muscles: those red things pulsing and contracting and expanding under your skin. It’s what you eat when you eat a steak. Mmmm, visuals. Muscles are what cause your skin to move in certain directions, your eyelids to blink, your eyebrows to draw together, and skin to wrinkle.
As, what I like to call, an “expressionsmith,” one who crafts expressions with purpose, at least a bare-bones knowledge of which muscles pull where, how they define the face, etc., is definitely very, very helpful. I would call it required, but that’s my opinion. In any case, at least take a quick peak on Google at the underlying musculature of a face. You’d be surprised just where muscles are.
I’m not going to go into terrible depth with this because really, this is something to be done on your own time.
Moving on.
-The Seven Basic Expressions-
Humans are beings of expression and nonverbal communication. In communicating, we often receive at least a third of the information from the person communicating to us in a non-verbal manner. Because of this, humans have need of an enormous range of expressions, getting up in the thousands. Despite these large numbers though, all complicated expressions come from seven basic expressions, with traits individual to them: anger, contempt, sadness, happiness, surprise, fear, and disgust. Pain could also be argued to be on here, though it shares many features of the prior seven expressions listed.
Each expression, though, is made up of particular features inherent to it, that it does not share with other expressions. From mixing and matching these features, we can get the thousands of variations that make everyday life so interesting.
I’ve made some drawings to illustrate the seven basic emotions. I won’t go into what each is, because this can be done on your own time. Please remember that the most basic expressions are being listed: these are the expressions in their purest forms. That's... kind of why they're horrible. I was not so used to drawing the pure form of each emotion!
Anger
-eyebrows down and together
-eyes glare
-lips narrowed
Contempt
-lip corner tightened and raised on only one side of the face
Disgust
-nose wrinkling
-upper lip raised
Fear
-eyebrows raised and together
-raised upper eyelids
-tense lower eyelids
-lips slightly stretched back horizontally toward ears
Happiness
-crow’s feet wrinkles
-movement from cheeks
-movement from muscle surrounding eye
Sadness
-drooping upper eyelid
-losing focus in eyes
-corners of mouth drop down
Surprise
-eyebrows raised
-eyes wide
-mouth open
All of these may also be used to varying degrees and intensities, further expanding the range of emotions to be expressed.
Surprisingly simple though, no? and surprising that a multitude of complex expressions come from only these seven. Take an example of snobbish indignation:
An aristocratic, supercilious man, walking through the lower class parts of town, is suddenly surprised by a pan-handler. Naturally feeling contempt for the people around him, his surprise is mixed with disgust and outrage that someone could approach him so blatantly and irreverently. Perhaps he’s even feeling fearful for his own safety.
Are you already creating an expression for this fellow? Maybe raised eyebrows, pushed together, wrinkled nose, mouth parted, wide eyes? Something similar? This is what I came up with:
Take a look at those traits: mouth parted can indicate surprise and fear; wrinkled nose indicates disgust; raised eyebrows, pushed together can indicate fear and anger together. All of these have created a unique expression of surprise for this snobby fellow, and added another level of depth.
Any questions? If so, comment below! If not, then let us move on to Bringing Out Expressions, Part 3! ... Sometime.