The Many Facets of Drawing Angry Faces!

A relatively simple expression, drawing angry faces puts most of the focus on the eyebrows and the bridge of the nose. The eyes are narrow and stretched out.

Think about when you're angry. What does your face look like? Most importantly, what does your eyes look like? When you're angry, you are focused on something or someone very intensely. As such, you want to have your characters focusing on giving a direct glare.

For the mouth, you want to show teeth. Whether your character is shouting or gritting his or her teeth in an effort to suppress the anger, make sure to paint in some teeth!

So when you're ready, start up a plain digital canvas and follow along with your digital brushes!

1. Front view

Let's start off with the front view when drawing angry faces. This is to get you to look at the expression from a symmetrical point of view. The practice here will double as you are working on same side twice.

Some key elements here is the 'V' shaped eyebrows. You want to narrow the eyebrows downwards and into the bridge of the nose. Be sure to compress the muscles of the bridge.

There should be a horizontal compression point in between the eyes because the forehead is pushing the eyebrows downwards and directing it to the center.

The cheeks stretches downwards into the chin. The mouth is wide open horizontally as well. As mentioned above, you need to show some teeth since both the upper lips and the bottom lips are also stretched horizontally.

2. Partial side view

The same can be done for the partial side view. When drawing angry faces in this view, the trick is to give priority to the nose bridge. Because it's a stronger presence, make sure to have it protruding further out than normal from the compressed skin.

As for the mouth, you will need to make sure that the focus is bringing out the teeth as it protrudes forwards. Make sure to add some shading near the corner of the mouth. You want the mouth to open wide, but at the same time, closed near the corners to really bring out the teeth.

Everything else should remain similar to your frontal view. If you like, you can make the nostrils flair up as well. However, careful to make sure the nostrils still look real because the other nostrils will be covered by the under area of the nose.

3. Profile view

What you can do, however, is focus on the corner of the eyebrows and on the horizontal bridge of skin that is just below the eyebrows. Use these as points to highlight the point of stress in the muscles. Don't forget to make the 'V' shaped eyebrows. Or in this case, half of the 'V.'

For the mouth , focus on the lips and chin going outwards. At the same time, draw the teeth showing underneath. Depending on the intensity, you can also draw some gums on the upper portion as the teeth grits together.

4. Variations on drawing angry faces

So far, the example illustrates one type of anger. There are many ways to drawing angry faces. The first extreme deals with rage. In this expression, the mouth is opened as much as possible because the character is expression anger that is not suppressed.

As such, the muscles give an indication that the character is shouting or creating some sort of noise with the vocal cords. These 'at the moment' depictions will enhance the current situation for short bursts of communications within a setting.

On the opposite end, you can have characters suppress anger. To focus on this type, the mouth can be seen closed up, fairly closed up, or have the lower lips being hidden by the upper lips. Such type of anger suggests a longer time period of displeasure from the situation.

Either way, you still have the special trait of the “V' shaped eyebrows and compressed nose bridges. So remember these details and you can start drawing angry faces in many different variations easily!

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