Faces and poses show feeling — Art, 7–10 years
Artists can suggest a feeling through a face, a body position and the way a figure moves. Art, 7–10 years.
Feelings in a figure
A figure can look joyful, worried, tired or angry without saying a word. A raised mouth may suggest a smile, lowered eyebrows can suggest concern, and open arms may suggest welcome. Artists combine the face, shoulders, hands and whole pose, because one small clue can mean different things in different situations.
Why show feeling without words
A picture often needs to tell us what a person is experiencing before we read any speech or caption. Artists have long used expressions and poses to make a scene understandable, especially when the image must work across different languages. This solves the problem of showing an invisible feeling by giving it visible clues.
A worried traveller
Imagine a traveller has lost a map. First draw the eyebrows slightly together and raised in the middle. Add wide eyes looking to one side, a small straight mouth and shoulders lifted towards the ears. Turn the body a little while one hand searches a pocket. These clues together suggest worry more clearly than a single frown.
The one-clue trap
It is tempting to draw a huge smile whenever a character is happy, or a single tear whenever the character is sad. That is reasonable because we learn simple signs for feelings very early. But one sign can be misunderstood: a smile may be nervous, and tears may be from pain or laughter. Several clues and the scene give a clearer message.
Stories, comics and posters
Facial expressions and poses help in comics, animation, theatre posters and picture books. They let us understand a character quickly, even when there is little text. Photographers and filmmakers use the same clues, but a real person’s feeling may be more complicated than the picture suggests, so the image is a hint rather than proof.
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