I’m sure at some point you’ve heard that the eyes are the window to the soul. I don’t know who said that originally. I imagine it’s one of those things that gets said over and over because it’s seen over and over. From the beginning of people eyes have been doing more than looking out. They’ve been revealing what’s within. I seem to remember a bible verse about them being like lamps lighting what’s inside. And Shakespeare surely mentions attraction being in the eyes. Know what I mean, gov’nr? Nudge nudge, wink wink. And this is the kind of talk that gets me wifely eye rolls.

Anyway. It’s true. The eyes show what’s going on inside someone’s head. Much of the time, at any rate. It’s only sometimes true when cookie snitching kids are involved. Their ability to hide behind “I’m cute and innocent” makes it nearly impossible to see the truth in their eyes - that they’re sneaky snack bandits.

But when you’re drawing a character, and you’d like to give it an extra spark of life, then showing the character thinking is something for you to think about. As a character’s creator you’re on other side of the window looking out. You’re aware of not only what your character is doing, but also what it might be thinking or feeling.

And that is what your audience would like to know. What’s happening on the inside.

Sure you can make a character look happy by putting a smile on his mug. Smile=Happy. Right? But what if you want the character to only pretend to be happy? How do you pull that off? Take a look at the frog below. He’s happy.

I guess he’s just happy to be sitting there. Who can tell if he’s pretending to be happy or not? There’s not much depth expressed in his face. He’s two dimensional. No intellectual activity is happening with this frog. Maybe he’s a stuffed amphibian, or maybe a traumatic head injury left him with the cognition of veggie soup. He’s brain dead.

One way to get the illusion of a thought process to appear is to have characters look in different directions. And each direction can allude to a different thought. Watch what happens when I have him look up. I’ll just change the eye positions in these examples. The expressions would be stronger with the rest of face reinforcing the emotion, but I want to focus on just the eyes right now.

I know.

We’ll imagine that the frog is trying to hide his thoughts from us by keeping the cheesy grin in place.

Looking up the frog is no longer focused on us. Now he’s remembering his favorite meal or planning his next hop. The character has gone from a lifeless grin and a blank stare to being a character with some intellectual depth and memories.

How about if I have the character look to the side. Or down. What could he be thinking?

He could be looking at something next to him, or he could be considering the best way to say, “rrriibit”.

When he’s looking down he could be remembering something that makes him sad. A lost love who he misses very much. But he knows that she doesn’t miss him and he’ll never hold her again.

Well. He could be.

Maybe he’s just aware that he has gas and he’s wondering if he can pass it without the frog next to him noticing.

I guess the point that I’m trying to get across is, if you want to give your character a little bit more life, some extra depth, then give them something to think about and then make them look like they’re thinking about it. They don’t HAVE to look blankly into space or even at what’s next to them. Or even out at the viewer. Real people, depending on what they’re thinking, look in different directions constantly as they pull thoughts and emotions free.

Frogs can appear to do it too.

As can walruses.

Being a thoughtful kind of guy, Tommaso Inghirami did it all the time. And Raphael captured it.

Charlie Bowers did it for comedic effect.

Okay. Okay. I’m done. I hear a thousand groans, but thinking on thy face. I’ll end with a verse by William Blake;

“This life’s dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole.”

In part two of this series of tutorials I’ll show you the magical power of eyelids.

Did you find this tutorial helpful? Comments, questions, and suggestions are appreciated.

Update:
“Dude Duck” (1951) A great example of a character thinking.