Drawing and Painting Expressive Little Faces

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.

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.

A good beginner guide to drawing faces with character and expression. The different features are carefully explained and the author gives some good tips on making up a face with the different parts. He gives some good up to date pointers for how to improve your faces and what to observe and focus on. There is enough good foundation instruction for any beginner to become confident and fairly competent in producing characterful faces.

Drawing and Painting Expressive Little Faces was a delightful read. As an educator, not only was this book a valuable resource for my students but for myself. I was able to use the pages about facial proportion and the fun fruit activity to demonstrate proper placement of facial features with students from pre-K to 4th grade.

One excellent feature for my students was that Amarilys provided different skill levels of facial drawing and painting and how they might look in more detail. This was encouraging to them, as they saw the gradient of skill levels that they could one day achieve.

This book is colorful, quirky, fun, and definitely a book that I would recommend to fellow educators who might not have a strong art background. It was just the confidence booster that I needed! Thank you, Netgalley and Quarry Books for the ARC. This is my honest review.

A beautiful, easy to follow beginners guide to drawing and painting people. The illustrations and photography are stunning.

This was a really cute art book. You can definitely use this if you're a beginner as the author gives good explanationds and ideas to mix and match eyes, face shapes and mouths.
I especially liked the idea of the gift wrapping paper and personalized face gift tags.

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.

I found Amarilys Henderson on Skillshare and loved her cute little tutorial for little faces. I learned a lot.
The book is perfect for beginner, since the techniques are easy to follow. I also recommend to take her Skilshare class.
I wish she included more step by step tutorial in this book.

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

What a fun book! Her techniques are so fun and unique and are usable in any type of drawing not just watercolor. I like that she makes you comfortable drawing faces, which can be very intimidating. This was an ARC copy from Netgalley.

This is an exceptional book to help you draw or paint faces. It's designed to give people of any experience level the tools to make nice little faces, with tons of information about all of the steps. The author gives pages of examples of eyes, noses, eyebrows, etc. to copy so you can personalize your faces and practice both simple and complex features. She goes into materials, steps, you name it. I really liked the fact that she shows you how to do different levels of complexity too -- here's how to do really simple eyes, all the way to here's how to do very elaborate ones.

This is a fantastic tool especially well suited to novice artists who want to improve their art. Kids should be able to use it well, too.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.

When I requested this book I did not realize the painting she was referring to was watercolor. Even though it was not acrylic or oil painting, I found this book very helpful. Many of the techniques are the same as any medium.

Amaruils explanation of facial proportions and how to notice the important characteristics to make a face look distinguishable was very helpful. She demonstrates how to use photos to find the darkest darks. She gave good advice on how to draw and paint each facial feature.

This book is excellent for a beginner.

I received this galley from NetGalley.

Drawing and Painting Expressive Little Faces
Step-by-Step Techniques for Creating People and Portraits with Personality--Explore Watercolors, Inks, Markers, and More
by Amarilys Henderson
I love to do watercolor paintings but faces are so scary! I loved this book and cannot wait to purchase it for a physical copy to work through and use for reference. The author is so fun and forgiving with her teaching method throughout the book you can not help but feel comfortable as you try each prompt. If you are a novice or confident painter I think this book is a great resource to add to your bookshelf.
I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review, shared here.

This book is an art instruction book about creating somewhat stylized faces with marker, pencil, and watercolor. For each part of the face, the author showed how to make a very simple version and then how to add detail with just another mark to create more and more detailed variations. She talked about the proportions of a face and how to create the basic facial shapes, ears, eyes, noses, mouths, and hair. She then showed how to put these elements together to create a unique face along with adding accessories. She talked some about how to create different skin tones, though she's not highly realistic with skin or hair color. She also suggested ways to use these expressive faces in urban sketching, personalized cards, etc. Overall, I'd recommend this book to teens and adults who want to learn how to draw and watercolor paint somewhat stylized but expressive faces.

Drawing and Painting Expressive Little Faces is full of artful whimsy and delight that is inspiring for beginner artists, young and old. The details are explicit and laid out in such a way that is easy to follow. This tome leans more towards watercolors, which may be a bit offputting to a true beginner. There is a brief mention of pencil but the pivot is a quick turn to watercolor. Still, the author's enthusiasm for color is infectious. Also, shading and value are not as explicit as other step by step guides. Nonetheless, I found this a delightful read and cannot wait to try drawing and painting a few expressive little faces myself.

"Drawing and Painting Expressive Little Faces" is so beautiful and bright and truly a lovely inspiring and positive read. The 'you can do it!' attitude is informative and positive without being too sickly sweet. Just perfection.

The art is lovely throughout and shows a satisfying scale of progression. I found many things to value here. In particular I had not realised just how much I struggle to differentiate when drawing between masculine and feminine features without over simplifying the men.

The watercolour sections are lovely and as a novice I find them to be accessible and visually inspiring. I get scared of overworking with paints, which leaves me losing detail, so the colour blending techniques and practices for layering features were particularly useful.

The bright colours are wonderfully appealing and would absolutely recommend this for anyone interested that is of a beginner to intermediate level.

[This eARC was given to me via Quarry Books & NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

This is a lovely art book that simplifies painting faces so that anyone can try it. There is plenty of information about art supplies included, so the beginner is well catered to. The medium used is watercolour, and the step-by-step instructions are great, even if you have not drawn or painted before.

I received a free digital copy via NetGalley, but the opinions expressed are my own.

In this book, we see how fabulous faces can be created with easy guides to follow from what you need to get started through to how to create each tiny detail needed to illustrate the person's story on their face through either pencil, watercolour etc.



This is a delightful guide at how to draw and illustrate faces, I always struggle to get features right but this is a fabulous book to help perfect technique and beautifully vibrant too the book is a work of art and brilliant for artists!



Many thanks to the publishers for allowing me to review this book for them!

"Drawing and Painting Expressive Little Faces" by Amarilys Henderson

I enjoyed being able to read this great book, especially as a person who loves drawing faces and facial expressions. This book gives amazing tips on how to manage drawing facial expressions and it definitely makes it much more fun! Of course, you won't have results just like the authors' drawings, especially if you're new to painting and drawing, but it still is a great book for everyone who enjoys being creative!
I did particularly like the cover, which is very bright and has a happy vibe.

This is a beautiful book with so many creative ideas. If you are new to painting, this is probably not the book for you. It seems best for those who have a basic understanding of drawing and painting and the list of essential supplies is definitely better for those who already have them or use them. It is a great guide expressive faces and I love the colors used to make it so vibrant. It really brings simplified faces to life!

Loved the book and all the examples of different type of faces. I also love how detailed the book was and how it showed every single step and the material you need to use. Would definitely recommend.

I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in improving their drawing skills. It starts off with a great section on art supplies and then explains about facial proportions before building up the face gradually from its components. A great resource for shapes, I really enjoyed working through this book.

Drawing faces has always been hard for me. This book is amazing though. It's full of useful information and tips to help you step up your game. I highly recommend it

Excellent book it has great tutorials covering face shapes and face symmetry. It has very well done tutorials guided step by step which make it look easy... It really isn't but the tips in this book are incredibly helpful. It also takes you through each part of the face to help build the correct perspective and bring realism to you artwork.

I received this book from NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group for an honest review.
#DrawingandPaintingExpressiveLittleFaces
#NetGalley

Drawing and Painting expressive Little Faces is a wonderful addition to any artist's reference or "how-to" library. It includes a great deal of information about how to capture expressions and make them appear as realistic as possible with various media. Well done.

The author starts you off simple- by simplifying the face, you get to understand the shapes it is made up of, and that helps you to understand the space relationships of the eyes to the nose, for example. From their she builds up the simple face, so that you build memory of how to make a face. From there it is adding expression and characteristics, and then moving on to using color is an effective way to show shadows, uniqueness and features. It really is like having an at home art lesson series! And since you can get it on Kindle, you can get it right NOW, and let the kids learn alongside YOU! It is aimed more at adults, but teens will find it easy to follow along with as well.

Art is really therapeutic, and with many of us having a couple more weeks at home, this could be just the thing you need to keep occupied, now that you've cleaned and ran out of things to do!

This is an amazing find! The book gives you diverse ideas from the standard face shape. There are also ideas on things as basic as mouth and smaller shape.

This was a pretty neat book solely dedicated to drawing and coloring faces and hair. I loved the title! The faces are varied, amusing, and interesting. They're not photo-realistic, nor are they caricatures or cartoonish. They're somewhere in between, and the book shows how to create them and what techniques to use.

It begins with materials - paint, ink, pencils, brushes and paper, and moves on to a consideration of facial shapes and proportions, and where to place the features, and not only for a face looking squarely at the viewer, but for faces at assorted angles. There are several pages devoted to eyes and eyebrows, and how to place the highlight in the eye. There are several more pages on noses and mouths, and more on developing facial expressions. In short there's a lot to learn and nothing missed, with lots of tips and good advice along the way.

I commend this as a useful and worthy read.

Took me this long to relise that the length of the nose is shown only when the person is at an angle. Started with focus on eyes and then moved onto other features. Ther are about 20 options to make your person. All this with water colors. Fun book. Do try it out. I like the insistence on patience as it takes a while to practise and get better at drawing one of the toughest things... faces.

I love the wonderful illustrations of the Little Faces! Such a fun and beautiful book filled with easy to follow instructions.

This book is aimed at novices, dabblers, and people interested in painting and drawing faces. This is not a book about portraits, or anatomy, but a well-guided step-by-step tour on painting colorful likenesses of people using a less-is-more approach.
It is a cute little book, and I think even people new to watercolor will get good results on their first tries.
I really don't dig the part containing Gender: Male/Female, though. Either, she means biological sex, or she should have included a small part that acknowledges everyone not falling in those categories.

A great guide for the beginner, this is a book full of ideas for painting faces. It takes you through all the different aspects of the face and how to paint or draw them step-by-step. In six colourful and well illustrated chapters we are instructed on how to build a face. It starts by looking at suggested equipment and then it is all about the painting. It takes you through each aspect of the face and hair, and then looks at how to pull it all together with particularly useful guidance on how to inject a little personality. Now, where are my paints? Thank you to Amarilys Henderson, Net Galley and the publisher, Quarto for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book. A very clear step by step guide to drawing faces.

The book starts with a comprehensive chapter on materials before getting into the details of the face.

Each chapter has a number of simple exercises which help to build up realistic, expressive faces, starting with the 'egg trick' although she uses a fruit to show how faces appear at different angles, moving onto the individual features of the face.

Whilst much of the style is very cartoon-like some of the exercises are for more realistic renditions of faces.

I think this is good for beginners but also for more established artists to brush up their skills.

I love this book. I am one of those people who loves to draw and paint. However, I have always struggled with faces. In Henderson’s beautiful book, she includes tips, lessons, and examples on how to “create people and portraits with personality”. Not only was the book an extremely enlightening and helpful read, it also included many amazing drawings/paintings from the author herself. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking to improve their artistic skills or to anyone who wants a fun artsy book to enjoy,

Absolutely amazing drawing book!
The book goes through every step on how to draw small adorable faces. Amarilys Henderson is so so talented and provides so many helpful tips and examples of how to draw each step. I absolutely recommend to all who want some fun art projects!

I read more arts and crafts books than I truly use. I feel like even a book I am not in love with, there is something interesting to read. This book? I actually grabbed a sketchbook and started doodling faces. Maybe because faces are what I enjoy doodling the most. Or maybe just because the author is really good at giving tips and tricks for drawing simple looking little faces (not always as simple as they look).

The author covers the main facial features both how to doddle them and how to paint them. Then finishes with how to add some character to them, including things to look out for with different age ranges..

Definitely useful. The type of book that makes you pick up your pencil, pen, or brush right away.

Great book! I love drawing and watercolor and I've always struggled with faces. This book tells you what supplies to use and some tips. It teaches you about face proportion, angles, shapes and then how to build a face. I found it a bit hard but I'm still trying! I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review

Drawing and Painting Expressive Little Faces is a step by step tutorial book by Amarilys Henderson. Released 18th Feb 2020 by Quarto on their Quarry imprint, it's 144 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats.

This is a well presented and colorful tutorial guide for rendering faces in several media: watercolors, liquid pigment, paint paper pigments, and inks & markers. The tutorials are very well illustrated and include step by step process illustrations.

The tools and materials are universal and will already be owned by most artists. For readers starting from scratch, the basics are easily accessible and inexpensive. The introduction includes a good discussion of tools and materials and cover both practical (what paper to choose) to encouraging general advice (getting over the intimidation of starting and gaining confidence).

The instructional chapters break down the face into features, showing proportions and individual eyes, noses, hair, etc and then show the student how to build the parts into a cohesive and pleasing whole. The whole book is quite versatile, but I think the art is especially suited to (and I will use it for) enhancing bullet journals. I had been looking for a specific tutorial guide for bu-jo sketching and this is a nice one.

This would make a superlative selection for a makers group/studio or for the home library. The numerous well illustrated included tutorials are simple but really appealing.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Really enjoyed this great step by step book about drawing and painting. Lots of great tips and examples that will encourage you in your artistic drawings.
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

Hi everyone!
This book is everything I wanted it to be! It perfectly helps you with learning how to draw expressive faces.
As the author said in the introduction: "This isn't a book on portraiture. It is a book on faces. What's the difference? Portraits tell us what we see, faces can describe who the person is".

This book takes you on a journey and tells you what materials to use and then there is a step by step guide on how to create face shapes, add eyes, nose, etc.
Also, this book is all centered around drawing faces with watercolor, which is very difficult but explained very well: in fact, it helps with skin tones and for small features how to go from graphite to water.
At the end of the book, there is also a section on how to add personality: with color and features such as freckles and glasses.

I love drawing portraits and I always struggle with "giving life" to the faces and this will definitely help! In fact, I recommend this book to everyone who, like me, wants to improved drawing expressive little faces.

Beautiful to look at and helpful tips. Still intimidated by faces but like having the resource and i will look to it for some support ! A lot of tools laid out in the beginning that I likely won’t buy so I do wish there was a variation on this part but I also understand the point was to teach watercolor faces. Awesome!

Thanks to publishers and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

I really loved this informative book! It's great, whether you're a beginner, or an old pro, there's something new to learn. Great details, I highly recommend!

This is a fun book, which will be useful in understanding the principles of areas of drawing faces. The book starts off with a list of art supplies such as watercolour, ink, paper and more, it progresses to simplifying the face and then adding the features in building the face. The last two chapters include putting it all together (with skin tones colour, monochrome) and painting real people and adding diversity. There is also a suggesting of doing quick sketches and little projects to make.
Enjoyed this book a lot

I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

This book is such a fantastic resource for learning to add expression to faces you draw and create.
The author gives an abundance of information for each step and it is easy to follow and understand.

The art work of expressive faces within this book is absolutely beautiful and I hooe I can try out some of the techniques and steps soon with my daughter.

I always struggle with drawing facial features so I'll definitely be giving this book a try out!

A solid guide to drawing and painting, even for a newbie artist like me. I'll use some of the tips I've picked up in here to make stuff and it's quite good as a reference book.

A brilliant and easy to follow book not just for beginnners but help refresh the expericened artist. A great book to go back to again and again. A great resource for all artists

This is the perfect book for, as the title says, expressive little faces!

I have recently started doing more sketching and persona work in my professional life. I loved the way the author Amarilys Henderson made a small face have a big personality.

Amarilys talks about choosing your simplicity, proportions and what features can't be missed (such as dimples and glasses)

I love her break down of face shapes and comparing building a face to building a pizza!

Amarilys provides you with eyes, noses and mouth to get you started on your face journey.

What a fun book if you have any interest in drawing whatsoever. That's why I requested to borrow this one thanks to Netgalley and Quarto Publishing Group!
All feedback is completely my own.
The author teaches from the beginning how to draw faces in stages so that anyone can do it.. She also explains how to get the lighting in the eyes and so many other techniques that beginners would love to learn. She teaches the different mediums you can use to draw faces, not just pencil! She explains how to choose and draw various hairstyles for your face.
There is so much to take away from this book. It is worth owning a physical copy.

This is definitely a must have for beginners and advanced artists alike! Obviously, reading the author bio, she is a seasoned vet in her craft (20 years experience minimum!) but this material heavily researched and presented in a way that is concise and easy to understand. Not to mention she presents diversity very early on and even has a small section on mixing different skin tones. This is truly a lovely resource and I look forward to purchasing a print copy for my own personal reference collection.