Credit where it's due, right up front: this whole idea is inspired by the Illustrious XL v0.1 Visual Dictionary (Civitai) — and a good chunk of the expressions here are pulled straight from that guide. Go check out the original, it's great.
Why this exists
I was tired of digging through internet every single time just to remember the one tag for that one specific smile. So I made a Ctrl+F-able visual dictionary instead (with the help of the super duper cute Izayoi Nonomi as the model): tag next to example image, done. No more guessing, just searching (using the eyes).
Heads up: I am 10000000000% sure there are expressions missing here. This is a living document, not the final word — see "What's next" at the bottom.
How it's organized
Emotions and Expressions — the vibe the face gives off.
Physical Features of Expression — the specific part (mouth, eyes, eyebrows, nose, whole face...) building it.
ASCII Emoticons — ^^, @@, and friends.
Misc — composition/context tags that showed up under the same Danbooru tag group.
Other — vocalizations and related actions.
Each row of images (4 columns) has its tags listed right above it, so search works Ctrl+F-ing.
Note: NSFW expressions were cut from this public version — you can search them at Danbooru — Tag Group: Face Tags.
A note on color-coding
While testing, I ran into some tags that either didn't do much on their own, or whose effect I genuinely couldn't confirm. So I'm marking a few of them:
🔴 Red — tags that don't seem to have any visible effect on their own, at least in my tests.
🟠 Orange — tags that might be doing something, but I'm not fully sure — either because the effect was too subtle to tell apart from randomness, or because the tag likely needs to be combined with others to actually show up properly.
Take both with a grain of salt — this is based on my own testing with my own setup, so your mileage may vary depending on the checkpoint, LoRA, or the rest of your prompt.
Generation info
Positive Prompt:
1girl,
nonomi \(blue archive\),
masterpiece, very aesthetic, absurdres,
brown hair, long hair,
portrait, looking at viewer, straight-on,
variable_tag,
white background, simple backgroundNegative Prompt:
black background, bad quality, worst quality, worst detail, sketch"Variable_tag" being the only tag swapped out to generate each example image in the guide.
Checkpoint: WAI-illustrious-SDXL v17.0
Sampler: Euler Ancestral
Steps: 30
Guidace: 7
Resolution: 1024x1024
Seed: 2965309313
Base Image Result:
Emotions and Expressions
😁 Smile / happiness
Tags in this row: smile, light smile, evil smile, seductive smile
Tags in this row: nervous smile, false smile, forced smile, crazy smile
Tags in this row: fingersmile, smiley face, grin, evil grin
Tags in this row: happy, happy tears, smug, smirk
Tags in this row: doyagao, glasgow smile, troll face, stifled laugh
😟 Sadness / crying
Tags in this row: crying, crying with eyes open, tearing up, streaming tears
Tags in this row: wiping tears, single tear, teardrop, flying teardrops
Tags in this row: tears, sad, sad smile, gloom (expression)
Tags in this row: depressed, despair, frown, sobbing
Tags in this row: disappointed
😡 Anger / seriousness
Tags in this row: angry, anger vein, annoyed, furrowed brow
Tags in this row: serious, v-shaped eyebrows, disgust, scowl
Tags in this row: clenched teeth, frustrated, grimace, glaring
😳 Embarrassment / blushing
Tags in this row: blush, light blush, full-face blush, body blush
Tags in this row: ear blush, nose blush, shoulder blush, spoken blush
Tags in this row: blush stickers, single blush sticker, embarrassed, shy
Tags in this row: nervous, nervous sweating, flustered, nosebleed
😮 Surprise
Tags in this row: surprised, wide-eyed, raised eyebrows
Tags in this row: raised eyebrow, raised inner eyebrows, panicking
😨 Fear / nervousness
Tags in this row: scared, trembling, horrified, traumatized
Tags in this row: worried, wince, pain, screaming
Tags in this row: color drain, turn pale, distress, struggling
😴 Tiredness / sleepiness
Tags in this row: sleepy, yawning, exhausted, sigh
😵💫 Confusion / daze
Tags in this row: confused, empty eyes, expressionless, rolling eyes
Tags in this row: skeptical, unamused
💞 Other emotions / attitudes
Tags in this row: bored, lonely, guilt, envy
Tags in this row: drunk, evil, crazy, disdain
Tags in this row: determined, thinking, pensive, sulking
Tags in this row: excited, facepalm, confident, pout
Tags in this row: curious
Physical Features of Expression
👄 Mouth and teeth
Tags in this row: open mouth, closed mouth, parted lips, teeth
Tags in this row: upper teeth only, lower teeth only, round teeth, buck teeth
Tags in this row: sharp teeth, clenched teeth, fang, fangs
Tags in this row: fang out, fangs out, skin fang, skin fangs
Tags in this row: tongue, tongue out, long tongue, colored tongue
Tags in this row: blue tongue, purple tongue, forked tongue, saliva
Tags in this row: saliva trail, drooling, mouth drool, puckered lips
Tags in this row: biting, biting own lip, round mouth, puffy cheeks
👀 Eyes
Tags in this row: closed eyes, half-closed eyes, half-closed eye, staring
Tags in this row: one eye closed, constricted pupils, cross-eyed, squinting
🥸 Eyebrows
Tags in this row: thick eyebrows, short eyebrows, curly eyebrows, forked eyebrows
Tags in this row: mismatched eyebrows, huge eyebrows, no eyebrows, eyebrows hidden by hair
Tags in this row: eyebrow cut
⭐ Stylized shapes and effects
Tags in this row: heart-shaped pupils, heart-shaped eyes, solid circle eyes, wavy mouth
Tags in this row: diamond mouth, chestnut mouth, dot mouth, glowing mouth
Tags in this row: heart in mouth, heart-shaped mouth, hollow mouth, no mouth
Tags in this row: peanut mouth, rectangular mouth, sideways mouth, snake mouth
Tags in this row: , split mouth, stitched mouth, text in mouth, triangle mouth
Tags in this row: Yurie mouth, dot nose, no nose
😀 Whole face
Tags in this row: faceless female (faceless male), hole in face, mob face, void face
Tags in this row: shaded face
(˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶) ASCII Emoticons
Tags in this row: :d, :3, :o, :p
Tags in this row: xd, ^^, ><, <|>_<|>
Tags in this row: <o><o>, o_o, o3o, ==
Tags in this row: u_u, x_x, @_@, 0_0
Tags in this row: ;), ;D, D:, ;3
Tags in this row: x3, 3:, 0w0, uwu
Tags in this row: ;p, :q also :9, ;q, >:)
Tags in this row: >:(, :T, :エ, :/
Tags in this row: :|, x mouth, :c, c:
Tags in this row: :<, ;<, :>, :>=
Tags in this row: ;o, >3<, |_|, ._.
Tags in this row: (^o^)/, ^q^ also ^p^, >o<, >_@
Tags in this row: ++, +-, T_T, ^^^
🖼️ Misc
Tags in this row: portrait, profile, food awe, muscle awe
💬 Other (vocalizations and actions)
Tags in this row: laughing, moaning, shouting
Tags in this row: spoken expression, spoken blush, spoken sweatdrop, spoken heart
Changelog
- Added curious to the end of the "Other emotions / attitudes" row (suggested by @NanashiAnon).
- Updated the guide banner image
What's next
This is round one — I'm planning to build the same kind of visual dictionary for other stuff too, not just faces: poses, camera angles, clothing states, you name it. Whatever keeps making me dig through tag lists for ten minutes is fair game for the next one.
Got a tag I missed? Send it over and I'll add it in! I'll keep updating this whenever I get a free chunk of time — work keeps me busy so it won't be super regular, but it's happening. Bear with me T.T
Sources and references
The Ultimate Illustrious XL Prompting Guidebook (Civitai) - Facial expressions entry
qdlabs/danbooru-tags dataset (Hugging Face)
Guide made for personal and hoping it could help someone else — corrections welcome in the comments.
😊👍