Sara Hagale on the nuanced art of capturing facial expression

Quite a lot has changed since we last caught up with the illustrator Sara Hagale four years ago. She’s got a new roommate, a lovely pup called Boop, who’s “added an immeasurable amount of joy to my life”, says Sara, and she’s gradually become more interested in using her art to capture something quite tricky – the vast spectrum of facial expression. “I’ve discovered that focusing on facial expressions is an ever-evolving practice in nuance,” says Sara. “I’m really interested in how much weight slight expressions can carry.”

Such a transition has required a shift in subject matter. While a lot of Sara’s previous work focused on inanimate objects, clean lines and colourful shapes, over the past few years she’s leant more into developing a recurring character – a tiny, wide-eyed girl. Said tiny, wide-eyed girl can be found in many states of being; looking forlornly at a blank notebook, craning her neck to take stock of scenes in the distance, or placing a pair of The Matrix-esque shades on her face. Some scenes, however, are a little more surreal. Mini versions of herself popping out of her own multiplied head, or the girl plucking her own brain out of her head and stomping it into the ground.

Whatever the situation, it’s really quite astounding how much emotion Sara manages to pack in with simple pencil lines and that shady graphite hue. It all comes down to Sara not only paying attention to the features on her character’s face, but other, more inanimate attributes, even using her ponytail – sometimes erect, sometimes drooping and sometimes in a state of disarray – “as an indicator of mood”, Sara says.

Sara’s ability to capture such specific unfiltered emotions (often those it feels we only express while in our own company, out of the potentially judging stare of others) makes her work endlessly relatable. Take a trip to the comment section on the illustrator’s Instagram page and you’ll find many comments that simply read ‘me’. Sara’s take on this reception is an interesting one: “I think relatability can be a byproduct of making work based on the human experience,” she says, “however, I think it’s dangerous for the end goal to be relatability.” So rather than leading with the mission to create something ‘relatable’, Sara simply stays true to accurately capturing her own personal experience of the world.

The tiny recurring character is, essentially, a depiction of Sara. “She’s me,” the illustrator says, “but she’s also separate from me – like this condensed, extremely distilled version.” To gauge situations, expression and emotion to use for her works, Sara takes time to analyse her responses, but it doesn’t involve a mirror, or cheeky iPhone selfies, just a gut feeling. “I have no idea how I actually look when I respond, but I know how I feel,” says Sara. It’s this process that Sara believes is the real reason behind people’s reaction to her work: “I think my work being relatable is a result of me being true to myself,” says Sara.

Sometimes, however, humanoid figures simply won’t cut it, and Sarah resorts to animals to more clearly realise her scenes, from fish and birds to bugs and mice. What Sara does so well is to capture the small mundane moments that can mean so much. A piece the illustrator is particularly fond of is Bug saves you a seat, a comical scene of an auditorium of bugs sitting on chairs, seemingly awaiting a show, film or lecture to begin, with one looking back at the viewer, pointing at the chair it has saved for them. “There’s something really warming about someone saving you a seat,” says Sara. “Then I decided to add more and more chairs of bugs making the saved seat even more special. I like the idea of the viewer being invited into a piece.”

Much like this piece, in which a character is literally beckoning you to join, Sara’s whole body of work feels like an invitation, to laugh, commiserate, or to relate. Despite coming from such a personal source, the illustrator’s determination to capture something so innately human means her work feels like something special, and something to be shared.