Basics of drawing a mouth
Hello everyone! Pardon me that I left you without new illustrations tutorials for some time. So now I’m here again and had prepare new tutorial just for you!
The purpose of this tutorial is to learn basics how to draw human mouth using simple techniques. We will be using a combination of different techniques to give a more realistic look to your drawing in next tutorials. My goal is for you to understand the techniques. The mouth and lips are a fascinating part of the face. So first off, an little overview of the mouth:
First off, notice the “contour lines” are over the mouth. The contours of the thin lines gives you an idea of how the mouth is constructed in a more dimensional way.
Heed that the upper lip “dips in” and how the lower lip comes out, which makes it lighter (more light on it). And note how the corners of the mouth have more shadow as a general rule, all of the upper lip is darker (compared to the lower lip).
Also, please notice that there are 5 basic “sections” at the lips. Depending on how much is a “cupid’s bow” the person you drawing has, you will emphasize these “sections” a little(or a lot :)) When you draw the mouth, be looking for these “sections” to the lips. Just try to put them there 
Well here we go. Well this is the outline that we will be working on.
Don’t make the outline too dark, just enough for you to be able to see the pencil. I darkened the image a bit so you could see the outline.
I mentioned that most people haven’t paid any attention to the details of mouth illustrations. We know the shape of our lips but we don’t know what it actually looks like. First of all they are not smooth. Lips are full of texture and one simple way to test this is to run one finger over them. You will feel the textures and contours. If you look at them close you will notice they are bumpy, especially the lower lip. You will also notice that when moist they reflect light and you can see these reflections. If you’re a woman you will notice these reflections much more if you are wearing glossy lipstick. These little things give the lips such unique characteristics and why not try to capture them on paper to give your pencil drawings much more realism.
The highlighted area with dark shows a shadowed area around the mouth that should not be forgotten. This shading indicates the structure of the face around the mouth. The mouth isn’t just plopped on the face, it is a three-dimensional thing, with surrounding muscles and structure. Usually, there will be some shading (subtle, but there) at under the lower lip, and around the corners of the mouth.
The highlighted area all around the lips is another often overlooked detail in portrait art. If you look closely at any person, you will see that we all have this area (ridge, whatever) around our lips. It is especially obvious right at the corners of the mouth.
So in the end something like summary:
- Sketch the outline of the lips.
- “Block in” the shading of the lips, putting more shading on the top lip, and leaving a highlighted area in the middle of the bottom lip, and some highlighted areas on the upper rim of the top lip.
- Add more shading and rendering. Don’t forget the “ridge” around the lips, and the shading around the mouth that suggests its structure. Add the darkest accents of tone to the corners of the mouth.
I hope you enjoy this tutorial and you learn a bit from it. Next time I’ll be more detailed with drawing mouth. Now you should practice with basics. Maybe your first mouth might not look as you want it, but you probably get used to this during reading this blog and you already know that with time you will see results, its all about wanting to improve and practice.
