This book contains step by step techniques for drawing faces that have personality and flair. The book begins with an overview of essential supplies, then takes the reader through exercises used to work on facial drawings and art. The author includes some great tips, such as snapping a selfie to see where the dark and light places of the face are. Overall, the information, tips, and techniques found in this book are very well written. I found them easy to follow. I would recommend this book for anyone who is looking to improve their artistic abilities.

Drawing and Painting Expressive Little Faces by Amarilys Henderson

Amarilys Henderson was one of the artists who first inspired me to explore watercolor. I'm so glad I have a chance to review her new book.

As stated in the intro, the purpose of this book is not to create realistic portraits. Instead, it is to translate the mood, personality and even dreams of individuals. The style is whimsical and a refreshing difference!

You will find all you need to learn to make a face look like a face – eg basic proportions, features and elements of a face. There are some pictorial step-by-step instructions on how to paint some of these, and pages full of examples of painted mouths, eyes, hair etc. I always have a problem getting face proportions right so the pages on this alone is so useful! The section on how to draw the very young and the old will be so helpful too.

The painting part of the book is so delightful. Learn to mix colors for skin tones in any shade you want, as long as they portray the message you are trying to get across. These can help you demonstrate the wonders of expression. Use standard skin tones if you so desire, but colour expresses so much more! The faces I see in the book are red, purple, green, orange, yellow! This is definitely something to explore in my art journaling!

Amarilys got me itching to pick up my brushes. Such a treasure of a book and such fun!

Thank you, Netgalley and Quarry Books for the ARC. This is my honest review.

What an absolute gem of a book!

This book does exactly what it promises. It breaks down the steps of creating a small, expressive face into small, consumable parts. It gives you many different permutations of face shapes, eyes, noses, mouths, and hair. It covers shades of skin and also mentions a few tips when using a real person as a reference.

Each of the sections is very simplified to show you how much can be done with simple steps. As with everything else, the key here is practice practice practice. These look easy but are often not until it's become second nature which takes a lot of practice. It also takes practice to notice subtle differences across features and to notice shade variations.

There are also a lot of details in the author's drawings that are not outlined like many ways to draw hats, jewelry, glasses, beards, etc etc. but this is a fantastic starter book to use to draw your first 1000 faces. After which you can worry about how to add more and more detail.

With gratitude to netgalley and Quarto Publishing Group for an advanced copy in return for an honest review.

Excellent book. Explains proportions of the face – something that I struggle with, face shapes and face symmetry. Very guided step by step instructions, which are really helpful and make it look easy! It also takes you through each part of the face, so you are building on your drawing on each stage.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.