Facial Action Coding System #AU6 exercise.

After doing some exploration in Paul Ekman's website, I found a link to one of his books, the Facial Action Coding System which has all of the coding information for facial movements. The first two chapters of the book are available online! In the second chapter, Ekman goes over action unit 6 which is the cheek raiser and lid compressor. There is a listed step by step instruction on how to do this action with your facial muscles. I tried doing it and while it seems super easy - it is a bit difficult to control the facial muscles as so.
The directions I followed:

• Try winking, using your cheek in the wink. Note how your cheek lifts. Now do that cheek lift without the wink. 
• Try squinting your eyes as though to block out a bright sun, and although this motivation is likely to produce AUs 4 and 7 as well, you can refine these movements to exclude all but AU 6. 

The end result:

Exercise in Memory and Faces

Inspired by James Elkins in his "What Is a Face?" chapter in The Object Stares Back, I did an exercise in memory. I first tried to write a description for a face I see a lot in my life, then I tried to draw it from memory. Now, naturally, I have a more cartoonish look to my illustrations, but it is really interesting how I described them, how I drew them and then what these faces look like in real life.