More Faces! (Patreon)

I'm becoming aware that a lot of these weekly sketches are just pages full of faces.  That's primarily because I just draw a LOT of faces, for warm-up, for the comic, or just in general.  When you think about it, almost every panel of my comic is centered on someone's face, or at the very least, a shoulders-up bust of the character.  That's partly because I think one of my strengths is the expressiveness of my characters, and partly because it's deeply within my comfort zone.  >.>  While I'll want to branch out and mix up the panel layout and introduce a little more variety into my art, even when I do, the CENTERPIECE of my comic is likely going to continue to be expressive character faces.  So I want to continue refining and practicing them as well.  Especially when it comes to the main character of the story.

Wanted to do something a little different this time though, and sort of show the evolution of a single face/expression.  Each finished sketch like the one in the top left usually goes through multiple evolutions and warm-ups that get completely tossed out before I'm satisfied, so here's a bunch of them, plus a few little sketches of Riley thrown in for good measure.

Usually I start with the vaguest idea of what kind of expression I want to draw, in this case, Kiva scowling angrily at something like he do (bottom left).  Then I might draw a rough guide-drawing or two, change up his expression or the angle of his nose a bit, before ultimately settling on a sketch that's "good-enough" to proceed with.  This is a pretty fast process for me, so I don't mind iterating on a single face sometimes 8-9 times before I'm ready to move on.  A comic will generally have between 4-8 faces in it I need to draw, so that's only about 32-64 face sketches I'll go through before a page is done.