ok your crit recap essek made me wonder! your expression work is STUNNING and it’s something i’m trying to train rn, do you have any tips on where to look for refs or how you get so much Feeling in those faces? (also totally ok if not i know sometimes this kind of stuff just spawns in from the ether and i have some stuff i’m already targeting for my practice)

aww thank you!

more often than not if i need to depict a very specific facial expression i just take a picture of myself making that expression and use it as a reference 🙈 exercising that acting muscle. there are also tons of models and photographers on deviantart who specially create references for artists and you can find a lot of good refs there, but it’s usually quicker to take a picture of my face so i don’t go the deviantart route that often haha (plus you can watch your own face in motion, and it often helps me to make the drawing less static). i do go hunting for other people’s faces though if the person i’m drawing has a facial structure that is very different from mine and i know that with this specific angle/expression my face would be useless as a reference. it’s usually the case when the expression is very extreme and significantly warps the facial muscles and skin! when using references i also try to pay attention to the fact that different people give different twists to even the simplest of expressions (muscle hypertension can change your smile drastically for example), so i try to make sure that i don’t put too much zmeess into the character i’m drawing haha. but tl;dr i just look at my own face a lot.