Facial Expressions Babies to Teens: A Visual Reference for Artists [Paperback]

These books by Mark Simon are great for cartooning or caricature study. The only problem I see is if you are looking for reference to use in more realistic images or trying to learn the proportions of the face. The images all have a slight 'fish-eye' distortion which makes them unsuitable for realistic work. The fish-eye effect pulls the center of the image forward and makes it larger and flattens the edges and makes them recede. This distortion also adds age to the subject so be aware that the kids pictures might not seem to agree with the listed age. This is really noticeable in the front view. Kids have small faces and features inside big heads, that's what makes them so cute, but when you distort the face like this it makes the face bigger relative to the head and ages them.

I'd caution artists who are learning how to draw the face to not try to copy these images exactly as you'll end up with a slight distortion in your realistic work that my be difficult to change later on (if you ever even notice what the problem is). To learn expressions and how the forms of the face connect these books are real good but I think the choice to get in close with the camera to really emphasize the expression was a bad idea from an artist's standpoint, especially for these young faces. From a sales standpoint maybe it works better to get customers attention with the exaggerated pictures. I'm writing this review because when I saw the 1st book I thought it would be really useful but it turns out I need more realistic reference. So I'm hoping the author reads this and considers my opinion, maybe for future products because I'd really like to use these books and recommend them to students.

I am an illustrator and thought this book would help me with the drawing of facial exprssion, especially with children.
Unfortunately, I am disapointed that too many of the expressions photographed in the book are not realistic: the children make faces, they obviously had much fun during the shoot but very few of the photos are usueful at all. I was hoping for more photos of faces expressing actual human emotions, not open mouth and grimacing faces. The book seem better for people drawing caricatures or possibly cartoons, but not very useful for realistic picture books.
A positive however: the age progression gallery at the end of the book is of interest.
Finally, the book is VERY POORLY MADE and the binding came appart with two days of actually using the book.

I own both Facial Expression books by Mr. Simon and for such a popular series you'd think they'd invest in a better photographer or a better camera. A lot of the photos, especially in this edition are very blurry and grainy. Though you don't need super well-taken photos to capture someone's facial expression it would have been nice if they would have upped the quality in this edition. I imagine it is difficult to direct children, but a lot of the expressions used were very similar too. This version has about the same amount of photos as the last, but they are a bit larger. I believe they made this change because one page after each person captured wasn't reserved for an illustration. This was a welcome change for me because a lot of the artists used in the previous book did sub-par work and some only re-drew the photograph of the person without applying the facial expression to something less obvious like an object or a fictional character. Overall, my satisfaction with this book is mixed. The first edition was far better because of the image quality, but it is nice to have references of children's expressions. Having little books to compare these 2 to, I had to give this 3 stars.