Some people think that your eyes are the windows to your soul. But they’d be wrong: It is actually your eyebrows — and the other area surrounding your eyes. When you are trying to read a person, you need to look at everything that is near the eyes, because that is actually what is reacting when someone is experiencing an emotion.
The eyebrows move and shape expressively, while the nose crinkles and the cheeks bunch upwards. For example: When you get scared, your face shows it. If you look at a freeze frame of someone who is startled, you will notice two things: the pursing of skin around the eyes and the flashing of teeth. The Atlantic explains that when scared, the face scrunches up making the upper lips pull up too, baring the upper teeth that looks almost like a smile or a laugh. When you bare your teeth, your eyes are shielded by wrinkles from the other skin on your face, so they are protected, but the rest of your face is expressive.
If you ask a professional portrait artist, they will tell you that the eyes themselves are actually very boring to paint, but the emotional expression, that’s where the challenge is. And that lies in the subtleties crowding around the eyeballs.
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