The phrase "a somber face" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe someone's facial expression that conveys sadness, seriousness, or a lack of cheerfulness.
Example: "After hearing the news, she wore a somber face that reflected her deep concern."
Alternatives: "a serious expression" or "a gloomy visage."
He listened to the judge on Wednesday with a somber face and pursed lips after bounding into the courtroom in his typically gregarious fashion, telling members of the news media, "I missed you guys".
The priest studied the note, then looked up with a somber face and announced that the Soviet Union and the United States had just launched nuclear missiles at each other.
But a somber face was the one thing I couldn't find.
I soon heard her footsteps approaching and quickly assumed the dramatic "punishment pose" of lying on my side facing the wall, while absent-mindedly tracing patterns on my sheet with a somber face.
I glimpsed a garish orange leather chair, yet another in Gottman's spectrum of bright colors, before he gathered his papers and led us into a conference room with a somber look on his face.
Two new novels have arrived that attempt to capture the mood by putting a decorously somber face on a traditionally comic subject, the story of the unrepentant womanizer.
There is the close-up of a Sudanese's somber face, a cloudy sky and a gentle horizon in the background, as an infant is given an oral vaccine.
Within this Conceptual framework, he invokes the entire history of portraiture, displays a terrific color sense (especially where skin is concerned), makes good use of his extensive hat collection, and subjects his somber face to an impressive range of physical and formal distortions.
So, good for Katie, but frankly, the only exposure I've had to her in the last 10 years has been her somber face on women's magazines with a headline about colonoscopies.
Despite the tanking economy and the various wars all over the world, nothing seemed to dent the calculated frivolity that is the Golden Globes -- nothing except "The Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan's somber face as he accepted the supporting actor in a motion picture award for the late Heath Ledger.
Then there was the small, somber face of Dolly, whose photograph the two women, both academics, had come across separately in their research and wondered about ever since.
