A Color Wheel for Emotion

September has been a swirl of emotion. On September 19th, my mother gently passed away in her sleep at the age of 92 and the whole family, from near and far, gathered together to mourn her passing and celebrate her life. I was sad and happy, angry and fearful, surprised and disgusted all at the same time.

A Nor’easter blew in as we all landed on Martha’s Vineyard and the weather mirrored my feelings with its dark, howling wind and flood of rain - the perfect weather for saying goodbye. While the storm carried on outside, indoors we gathered in community to support each other. Our grief grew a little lighter as we shared stories, prayed, laughed, cooked, ate her favorite foods, sang, recited poems, played cards and savored the web of connection my parents created during their 70+ years together.  

My mom created beauty everwhere she touched. She was an artist, a gardener, a collector, a businesswoman and a philanthropist. She had a tremendous capacity for joy and great enthusiasm for her life. She was a powerful matriarch who worked tirelessly to preserve our family and our island’s history. She loved our loud and energetic family reunions and we could feel her presence as we gathered for the first time in her absence. Instead of a quote this month I’m sharing a poem “Lament for a Titan” written by niece, Rachael Convery which she read at the funeral.

To honor my own emotional rollercoaster I want to share with you all I’ve learned about the relationship between facial expression and each underlying emotion.

For those of you who love portraiture and cartooning, capturing your subject’s personality is just as important as placing the features correctly. Understanding that there are only seven fundamental expressions universal to every language and culture makes communicating the inner world of your subject easier. Recognizing the components of each expression will also make it easier for you to understand when others are genuine in their feelings.

Reading facial expressions accurately isn’t a party trick, it’s a core piece of emotional intelligence, the capacity to recognize, interpret, and respond appropriately to emotional signals in yourself and others.

Genuine emotional expressions typically involve the eyes and mouth together, while posed or faked expressions tend to involve the mouth alone. People who read faces well tend to navigate social friction better, catch misunderstandings earlier, and build trust faster, because they’re responding to what the other person is actually feeling rather than only the words they’re saying. 

According to a 1960’s study by psychologist Paul Ekman all human beings, regardless of culture, language or age, associate the same facial expressions with these six emotions; happy, sad, anger, fear, sadness, surprise and disgust.

Research comparing congenitally blind individuals, who have never seen a face, to sighted individuals found that both groups produced strikingly similar spontaneous facial expressions in matching emotional situations.

That finding matters enormously for the nature-versus-nurture debate around facial expression. Ekman later categorized these six emotions as “basic” because they showed rapid onset, brief duration, and distinct, universal facial signatures that didn’t have to be learned.

Ekman’s findings were published in 1971, and became one of the most cited results in the history of emotion research. They suggest something startling: a scowl means anger whether you grew up in Boston or the Scottish highlands, and nobody had to teach you that.

Think of these six emotions as the primary colors of emotional expression. Everything more complex, like jealousy, pride, contempt, or nostalgia, gets built from blends and variations of these six, along with cognitive and cultural layers on top.

Each of the six basic expressions can vary in intensity from mild to extreme. Just as all the colors on your palette can be mixed from the three primary colors, so too can these six emotional primaries be modified and mixed to create most of the expressions we use every day.

Human beings are complicated creatures and our emotions are many and varied. Body posture, tone of voice, timing and situational context add additional meaning to the visual cues on our faces.  

In order to understand how to show these expressions on our own face, and in our artwork, we will need to recognize the underlying muscles of the face and how they interact to form each expression. While most muscles in the body connect bone to bone across a joint to help you move - many face muscles stretch from a bone outward to the skin and their only purpose is to give expression to the face. 



This is what a face looks like under the skin.

Here are examples of each expression with the characteristic features.

Happiness

Muscles: Zygomaticus major, orbicularis oculi

Characteristics: Upturned mouth corners, raised cheeks, crow’s feet around eyes

Happiness is the fastest-recognized and most universally identified of the basic emotions. It has a genuine version and a fake one that most people can’t consciously tell apart, but can unconsciously detect.

The real deal is called the Duchenne smile, named after the 19th-century French anatomist who first described it. It involves two things happening together: the zygomaticus major muscle pulling the mouth corners up, and the orbicularis oculi muscle around the eyes contracting, producing those crinkles at the outer corners often called crow’s feet.

A posed or polite smile usually skips the eye muscle entirely, because most people can’t voluntarily contract the orbicularis oculi on command. That’s why “smiling with your eyes” isn’t just a saying, it’s a genuine physiological marker researchers use to distinguish felt enjoyment from social performance, discussed at length in research on the psychology and social impact of genuine smiles.

Cultural display rules shape how broadly happiness gets shown.

Sadness

Muscles:Frontalis (inner brow), depressor anguli oris

Characteristics: Downturned mouth, raised inner eyebrows, drooping eyelids

Sadness is the most frequently misread of the six basic emotions, because it’s often subtle, brief, and doesn’t require tears to be genuinely present.

The core markers are downturned mouth corners, raised inner eyebrows (creating that distinctive “worried” triangle above the nose), slightly drooping upper eyelids, and sometimes a faint quiver in the lower lip. 



People assume crying is the tell. It isn’t.

Plenty of deeply sad people present as flat, quiet, and composed, with the emotion showing up only in that faraway look and the subtle downward pull at the mouth. More intense grief adds visible tension around the chin and throat, sometimes described as a “pebbling” texture of the chin skin as the mentalis muscle contracts.

Cultures that prize emotional restraint tend to produce muted public sadness expressions, not because the emotion is weaker, but because display rules suppress the outward signal. This is one reason relying on facial cues alone can lead you astray.

Anger

Muscles: Corrugator supercilii, orbicularis oris

Characteristics: Lowered brows drawn together, tightened lips, flared nostrils

Anger produces one of the most visually dramatic and physiologically loud expressions among the basic emotions, involving lowered brows drawn tightly together, vertical furrows between the eyes, pressed or tightened lips, flared nostrils, and a hard, focused stare.

Unlike happiness or sadness, anger rarely stays confined to the face.

Blood flow to the face increases, producing visible reddening. Neck and shoulder muscles tense. Fists clench. The whole body mobilizes, which makes sense given anger’s evolutionary function: preparing for confrontation, fast.

Anger gets confused with frustration constantly, but the two aren’t the same.

Frustration tends to be lower intensity and more inward, a furrowed brow and pursed lips without the outward, confrontational gaze that defines full anger.

Interestingly, deliberately making an angry face appears to amplify the actual felt emotion, a finding tied to the broader facial feedback loop linking expression and felt emotion. Relaxing your face when you’re heated genuinely seems to take some heat out of the feeling.

Fear

Muscles: Frontalis, levator palpebrae superioris

Characteristics: Raised eyebrows, widened eyes, tensed lips, retracted mouth corners

Fear’s signature look, raised and pulled-together eyebrows, widened eyes showing extra white (called sclera), a slightly open mouth with tensed lips, exists for a reason that goes beyond communication.

Research using eye-tracking and sensory measures found that widening the eyes during a fear expression actually expands the visual field and speeds up eye movement, giving the person a genuine sensory advantage in detecting a threat.

Fear and disgust don’t just feel different, they physically change what your senses can pick up. The fear face measurably widens your visual field and speeds your eye movements, while the disgust face does the opposite, narrowing sensory intake. These expressions may have evolved as tools for perception first, communication second.

That’s a genuinely strange and wonderful finding: the fear face isn’t only a signal to others, it’s an adaptation that improves the fearful person’s own ability to scan for danger. Widened eyes aren’t decorative. They’re functional.

Fear and surprise get confused often because both involve wide eyes and raised brows.



The distinguishing detail is the eyebrows: fear draws them together and down at the inner corners, producing an anxious, tense look, while surprise raises them without pulling them together, giving a more rounded, open appearance.

In the most extreme cases, intense fear can actually produce the opposite of expressiveness, a rigid, blank freeze response as the body diverts resources toward immediate survival rather than social signaling.

Disgust

Muscles: Levator labii superioris

Characteristics: Wrinkled nose, raised upper lip, narrowed eyes

Disgust is the most instantly recognizable of the six basic emotions because of one unmistakable feature: the wrinkled nose, produced by the levator labii superioris muscle pulling the upper lip and nose upward. Add narrowed eyes, furrowed brows, and raised cheeks, and you get an expression so distinct that even infants recognize and respond to it.

Disgust’s evolutionary job is contamination avoidance.



The nose wrinkle physically reduces airflow and sensory intake, essentially the face’s version of pulling back from something toxic. That functional logic explains why disgust shows up with remarkable consistency across unrelated cultures; the biological stakes of avoiding spoiled food or disease vectors don’t change based on geography.

What’s more interesting is how disgust has been repurposed. The same facial machinery that fires in response to a rotten smell also activates in response to moral violations, betrayal, or social transgressions. Somebody describes a cruel act, and you might catch yourself wrinkling your nose exactly as you would over spoiled milk.

That overlap between physical and moral disgust is one of the more compelling findings in the neurological science underlying emotional facial displays.

Surprise

Muscles: Frontalis, masseter (jaw)

Characteristics: Raised eyebrows, widened eyes, dropped open jaw

Surprise typically lasts under a second before morphing into something else, which makes it the briefest of the six basic emotions and, in some ways, the odd one out. It’s always reactive, always tied to something unexpected, and always transitional. The facial pattern is straightforward: raised eyebrows (often quite high), widened eyes, and a dropped jaw forming a rounded “O” shape.

What happens after that first flash of surprise depends entirely on how the brain interprets what just happened. A surprise party produces a burst of joy right after the initial jolt. A surprise tax audit produces something considerably less pleasant.



The muscle pattern at the moment of surprise is nearly identical in both cases; it’s the emotion that follows that diverges.

The overlap with fear trips people up constantly, since both involve wide eyes and lifted brows. The tell is in the eyebrow shape: fear draws brows together and down at the inner edge, surprise lifts them cleanly without that inward pull, producing a more open, rounded look around the eyes.

These facial expressions can be deliberately faked or suppressed, but genuine and posed expressions tend to differ in timing, symmetry, and which muscles activate.



Real emotional expressions typically involve muscles that are hard to control voluntarily, like the orbicularis oculi around the eyes during genuine happiness. Posed expressions often look slightly asymmetrical, start and stop abruptly rather than flowing naturally, or last unusually long, since people tend to hold a fake expression a beat too long while checking for the audience’s reaction.

If you are interested in digging deeper into emotional expression I invite you to play with the website “Grimace-Project". It was created by Scott McCloud, the author of “Making Comics” and it has sliders that allow you to vary the intensity of each emotion to create unique expressions. 

For many years my students created an artwork using these six expressions as the final project for my figure drawing class. I’m including a selection of these projects in this newsletter for your enjoyment. I hope you will be inspired to create an artwork using them too.

By learning what goes on under the skin you can better describe the emotions happening on the surface…. And show what’s going on in your subject’s mind. Whether you are a realist painter, a cartoonist or caricaturist, or just someone who would like to be better at reading faces, I hope this month’s article made it easier for you to send and receive facial communication. 

If you’d like more support in becoming a successful portrait artist I am always available to coach you in leveling up your skills. I’m also available if you’d like to commission a portrait of a special person or pet.

For individualized coaching and support in building the skills you desire, I’m here to help and I look forward to working with you.

If someone shared this newsletter with you and you'd like to subscribe, please reach out to me below with your email address. I promise, no spam, no overloading your inbox, just the good stuff.

I welcome the opportunity for connection, conversation, cooperation, collaboration, and commissions.

Live heARTfully

Susan Convery

P.S. If you didn't get the chance to download your free gift from me: Here are annual collections of my newsletters from September 2022 through December 2025.

Sources:

Scott McCloud “Making Comics”, Paperback, 2006

Gary Fagin, “The Artist’s Complete Guide to Facial Expression”, Watson-Guptill, 1990

Website App - “Grimace-Project” 

https://neurolaunch.com/6-basic-emotions-facial-expressions/

https://www.paulekman.com/universal-emotions/

Quote:

LAMENT FOR A TITAN:

by Rachael Convery

[to my grandmother]

how could it be true

that you who seemed

eternal–were in the end

as any one of us

a being of flesh and frailty

and jealously kindled hope

you had only just sent me a card

detailing the little vagaries of your summer

the last of the Osprey departing

on their yearly pilgrimage, how glad 

you were for the coming fall,

a progress report on the Impatiens we planted

to which I can now never reply

no more to receive your tidily clipped

newspaper articles on art, fashion, 

vegan recipes, pop culture, or other fancies

my name handwritten across the top

and folded small, to tuck 

into a letter or birthday card

the O.G. Betty Draper, pink-lipsticked,

bracelet stacked, jewels aglitter 

and Leo charisma in full effect

consummate painter, businesswoman, crafter,

philanthropist, gardening enthusiast, matriarch

at last hanging up her crown

you claimed you skimmed across the surface

of life, never too deep, never speaking

of your quiet pains, and yet

set your tendersharp hooks

deep and fast enough

to hold together a Grand Famille

walking the Persian-carpeted halls 

of the house where you held court

for nearly a century

savoring the best gossip 

or latest book you read,

the most recent shows

or music recommendations

the spectre of your Tiffany perfume lingers

as if you are still in the next room

the quiet clatter of shells

as you arranged sailors’ valentine's

the smell of oil paints and dried flowers

in the formal dining room that became

your studio, surrounded by the echo

of countless family dinners, spirited games

of Rummy, and past cocktail parties

the ghostly fragrance of cut lilacs

in an antique Chinese vase, stems 

lovingly crushed for longevity

the blown grass grapes in the window

stuffed into someone's suitcase in Provence

and somehow surviving the trip

the gold-moted dust and lemon-polished wood

and bone-china gleam of the antique shop 

I grew up wandering, the boxes of buttons

a mother-of-pearl dowry above

the hundred-year-old Singer

upon which I learned to sew

the Piglet and Pooh voices 

A. A. Milne by golden lamplight

in the backlit stained glass corridors

of childhood sleepovers

sweetbitter riot of a life's ransom of memories

your absence resonant as the lingering 

aftersong of grandfather clocks

and antique music boxes

they say matter cannot be created 

nor destroyed

I'll find you

in the bright laughter of birds

in silver whispers of rainfall

in the breath of wind through apple blossoms

in the sun

striking the harbor

through roselit scrollwork of clouds 

and raise a glass of Pinot Grigio–with 

ice, of course

to toast a life lived down to the marrow

to the last golden drop of honey and ambrosia

and your jubilant return

to stardust

If you live in the Fort Lauderdale area, consider hiring my very talented son, Jack Foltz, the subject of this portrait, as a private chef for your next party or family event. Those of you who have tasted Jack’s cooking know what a treasure he is.

Sketchbook Prompt:

Create a cartoon caricature whose face and body language describe how you're feeling each day this week.

I have new paintings to introduce to you!

In honor of June’s newsletter I am including a statement for each piece.

Title: Seixo Convent

Media: Watercolor

Size: 35"x 27"

Frame: Gold

Price:$1212

Statement:

While visiting Portugal last winter I stayed in a lovely convent that’s been converted into a luxury hotel. The cold stone walls of the inner courtyard contrasted beautifully with the warmth of these fabulous hanging lanterns. I love how the circular shape of the tables and banquette bubble up into the lamps and balconies in a joyous way.

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