How To Draw A Realistic Mouth: Step By Step Method To Capturing A Likeness

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Emily and welcome to this class on how to draw realistic. Now, I'm an artist from New Zealand in I teach at glasses to people who want to learn how to paint and how to draw. In this class, I'll take you through my process for drawing a realistic mouth. This class is suitable for complete beginners or for people who want to get better at portrait drawing on state of drawing a generic mouth. We will be working from a photograph to create a realistic and accurate drawing. We'll start by looking at the mouth as a group of three-dimensional shapes. And then I'll take you through some useful drawing exercises. After that was sat on the main project and follow four simple steps to plan, sketch, shade, and finish a realistic drawing. I've designed this class to simplify the drawing process for the beginner artist. I hope you enjoy it and net it provides you with new and useful drawing skills. Get started. 2. Materials: You can get away with just using one pencil for this class. However, it would be useful to have a light pink tool such as a to H for starting your drawing and maybe a to-be pencil for shading. You might also like to use a Q-tip or a tissue for blending and smoothing out your shading Max, any papers suitable for sketching will be fine. I'm using a smooth, lightweight sketchbook paper. Alternatively, you could also use a tablet and digital media like Procreate to take this class. 3. Basic Anatomy Of The Mouth: Let's take a look at the brief anatomy of the mouth. The most obvious parts are the top lip and the bottom lip. But there are a few other features I wanted to point out before we start. The philtrum is vertical groove between the nose and the top lip. The cupid's bow is a name given to that upside down triangle shape at the peak of the upper lip and the bottom lip. There are two plumped shapes known as tubercles. There's also one at the center of the top lip. 4. 3D Shapes Of The Lips: Think of the lips as being made up of five clump shapes. The top lip has three shapes. Each one is facing a slightly different direction. The bottom lip has two main shapes that curve back towards the face on either side. Plump hat shape of the upper lip protrudes the most. Sometimes these shapes are quite prominent. This makes them really useful landmarks for drawing. Take a look at your own lips to see if you can identify those five underlying shapes. 5. Exercise One: Warm Ups: Before we start drawing, I've come up with some useful during exercises. First we'll do some quick warm-up exercises, which will just help to loosen up your hand. And then we'll go through some more specific exercises which will introduce you to some of the drawing skills that you'll need in the final drawing project. As usual, we'll start off with some warm-up exercises to get our hand moving and to get used to some of the marks will be making when we're drawing mouth's. Start off by drawing short angled lines in one direction and then the opposite direction, alternating as you go across the page. Now, draw the same angled lines, but this time joining them all together. You'll see I'm going over each line a couple of times to establish the angle before adding the next line onto it. Try this again and this time increase the variation of the angles so that some are very sharp angles, are acute angles in some are quite shallow angles. Each time you draw a line, you're joining it onto the angle before it. This time draw a shallow V shape. And then on each side of that v at another shallow V, start with a Shallow V-shape in the middle and then join on another V-shape to each side, trying to keep both sides symmetrical. Try this again. Start with a shallow V in the middle and then try a deeper V on each side. You should have six angled lines joined together. Try this one more time. What we're drawing here is an idea of the center line of the lips with a joined together. Next, draw a small heart shape. Try to keep your corners soft. You'll see at the top and the bottom of the heart, there is a soft rounded corner, not a sharp point. Now draw long ovals at slightly upwards angle, keeping the hand loose and moving around the oval several times. Now we're going to bring all the sticky the start by drawing the center line that we practice, the six angled lines joined together, start with a v in the middle and then edit shallow V on either side. Now add a soft heart shape to the top of the center v. At an oval to either side of the heart shape. Two ovals to what will become the bottom lip. Try this again. Start with a center V. A V on either side. Head in the shallow heart shape at the top. Oval to either side. And two ovals on the bottom lip. You might draw these ones on the bottom that more as shapes, I get narrower as they go out towards each side. Notice how the oval shapes fit together with the V shapes of the center line. Try again, create your center line with six angles. At a soft heart to the top of the scene to be an oval on either side, and then two oval shapes to the bottom lip. This might look a little bit odd, but when we start to round off the center line and then add in a top line that follows the ovals in the heart and then add in a bottom line, you start to see the form of the lips come together. What we're doing is softening off the center line and then adding a line to the top that follows the curve of the top lip, and then adding a line to the bottom that will follow the curve of the bottom lip. This is just a warm-up, but it does give you some idea of how we can create the form of the lips using the center line, the heart shape in the oval shapes. Practice a few more in your own time. Try out some different angles to the center line and try out some slightly different heart shapes are oval shapes. Maybe they're more plump or maybe they're skinnier. 6. Exercise Two: Line Quality: The purpose of this exercise is to practice line quality, which is what we'll be focusing on when we go into our more detailed drawing. Line quality is how thick or thin, or how sharp or how soft, or how light or how dark Alina's. We need to learn how to control this with a pressure of alpine. Begin drawing a line across your page, starting with light pressure and then increasing the pressure and decreasing the pressure. And repeating as you go across, you'll end up with a line that goes from light to dark to light to dark and so on. Try a similar exercise, but this time draw hills and valleys curving up with light pressure and the energy come down into the valley increasing the pressure. Trying to keep a nice long continuous line. Light on the top of the hills, dark down in the bellies. You can repeat these two line exercises as much as you like until you feel comfortable with changing the pressure of your pencil as you move along or up and down a line. For this next one, we're going to try and create a short line that disappears to either side. So starting the center, inflict your way out to the left and then to the right. With short lite Max. Increase the pressure in the center of the line and decrease appreciate as you flick out to either side. The idea here is to have a line that is soft and dark in the center and sharp and light as it moves away from the center on either side. Use your pencil loosely in lightly allowing your hand to move freely across the page. Darken up the center line with a soft, dark, thick Mac in. Fade this out to either side using the pressure of your pencil. Now let's apply this to our center lip line. Remember the one that has six angles, start with the V and the center, then eta V to either side. Now use your pencil to darken up only some areas of the center line. Think about adding a darker, softer Mac to any of the joints between the angles. Once you've added those dark areas, use your pencil and the pressure of your pencil to fade them out into the line on either side. Draw the center line, darken it up at the corners where those angles meet. Fade out those dark areas to either side. By doing this, we get a much more natural looking line. We're increasing the depth of that center line of the lips because it's not exactly the same all the way across. And we'll see this as we go on to our final drawing. Try a few different variations again, start with the center line, those six angles joined together. And then use your pencil to darken up the corners, the joints of those lines, creating a nice soft, thick Mac. And either side of those dark areas, you're going to fade that soft thick mark out into the lighter line. You end up with a line that fades in and out from soft to hide, from light to dark. Now let's bring two exercises together. Very lightly. Draw your center line of the sixth joining angles, adding the heart shape. The four oval shapes. Then add some varying line quality to the center line, dark in the corners, and then fading out to lighter areas between them. You can also add a slightly darker line to the v of the upper lip line and to the bottom of the lower lip line. This helps to create some depth in some shadow. Even though this is just a warm-up exercise. Using this method is also a good way to draw a generic pair of lips. Especially if you're into illustration or character design. And you can adjust your line quality to bring some more depth and dimension to your drawings without having to add a lot of shading. 7. Introduction To The Project: Now we're ready to get started on our final drawing. You can download the photograph from the resources section of this class on the Skillshare website. And print this off or have it visible on screen. And then follow along with me as we worked through the four steps to complete the final drawing. Take a break whenever you need to, especially if you find yourself getting tired. Sometimes we just need to take a restaurant drawing and then come back to it with new and fresh perspective. As we go into a final drawing of the mouth, we're going to follow the four-step drawing process, the structure, mapping out the angles of the shape of the mouth, and in particular looking for the angles along the center line of the lips. Second steepest sketching, where we add and curves and look for those five plumped shapes of the lips. Next is blocking in where we shade to tonal values to identify the highlights and the shadows. And the last step is building detail. We will add a range of tonal values from white to black and refine the details. 8. Project Step One: Structure: Let's look at how to draw the structure of the mouth. We can create a map of the expression of the mouth by focusing on the angles of the center line of the lips. This will show whether the mouth is up tuned at each side or downturned, and it will help us find those pumps shapes of the lips. The scene two line is generally made up of six angles, and even subtle changes to these angles make a big difference to the expression. The top lip can be drawn with four angles and the bottom lip with three angles. After we found the correct angles of the center line and the top and the bottom lip. We can then sketch in the shape of the mouth. It's very important not to outline the top and bottom of the lips. So try to keep these sketch lines lighter than your shading will be. Look for the five clumped shapes of the lips and sketch and the ones that are prominent. And then we can also sketch the shape of the main highlight that usually falls on the lower lip. We'll begin by drawing our diagram somewhere up in the corner of the page. I always recommend doing a quick drawing first to just try and get yourself used to what it is that you're drawing. See if you can find these on your own in this diagram. And then I'll talk you through it further when we go into the main drawing, look for the six lines of the center line of the lips. Sometimes they are quite similar, but still see if you can divide them up into six lines, starting from the center of the middle line of the lips. Moving out on either side. Look for the four angles that make up the edge of the top lip. Again, start from the center. That v-shape of the cupid's bow and then add an angle on each side. Then we're going to look for the bottom edge of the lower lip. We're looking for three angles here, one in the center and then one on either side. Then you could go ahead and have a go at sketching in those underlying shapes. The heart shape in the center of the top lip, the two ovals on either side of that. Then the two ovals or ellipses for the bottom lip. Let's go ahead and start on the main drawing. Now that we have got our eye familiar with the photograph, start at the middle of the center line of the lips. Can you see that upside-down V-shape right in the center. They move out to the left trying to find at least three angles. In the same to the right, the right-hand side, I can really only see two main angles here. So that's all I'm drawing in. When you come to put in the four angles of the top lip, you're going to have to make a decision about how high up you put them. You see me gauge a line there. Just draw my pencil up from the center line of the lips up to where I think the top line of the lips stars. And I've drawn in the four angles that make up the top lip. Now we're going to draw in the three angles that make up the bottom lip. And again, I'm gauging with my pencil, drawing a line from the center line down to decide how low their bottom line is going to be before adding in the three angles of the bottom lip. 9. Project Step Two: Sketch: Moving on to our sketching stage now, remember this is where we can add a bit more of the three-dimensional form and think about the different planes that are facing the light or not facing the light. Start by putting in the heart shape of the center. See if you can identify this in the photograph. Whereas that for most points at the top lip where it jumps forward and then wind, where does it start to go back towards the sides of the face? That's where those two ovals are going to be on the top lip and then adding in two ovals for the bottom lip, you can quite clearly see a little crease between those two plump shapes beneath the lip. Then you can go through and round off some of the corners from the central line of the lip and from the top and the bottom each of the lips, when you're putting in the line of the top lip and the line of the bottom lip will be really careful that you keep these light. Have a look at the photograph. The only area you can see black is the center line of the lips and there's no outline around the top lip or outline around the bottom lip. In fact, the top lip actually has a lighter line around it, highlight line around it. We'll put in a very light line for now. But at some point we're going to have to make sure that the top each of the top lip is lighter than everything else. As you're rounding off the shapes, remember to keep looking at the photograph and make any adjustments that you need to if you see something that's different to what you have in your drawing. 10. Project Step Three: Blocking In: Before we start blocking in any of our shading, we're going to identify the highlight areas and also any shadow areas that you can see. There's a highlight area on the bottom lip. It's the part of the lipid comes forward to us the most and you'll see it's a light pink area with some white patches around the top of that shape. Look for the lightest areas first and then squint at the photograph and try to identify the darker areas. The lower part of the bottom lip on either side is slightly darker. Don't forget to mark out this bright highlight here on the top lip. And on either side of the heart shape on the top lip. It is also slightly darker. As I point out these areas of light and dark HEPA look in the photograph and makes sure that you can really see them. It's important that you draw only what you see. Sometimes that might be slightly different to what I see. Once you've identified your light and dark areas as shapes that you sketch in lightly, then start to shade in everything that is not going to be white. And it's most of the lips. If you think of sketch lines are too dark and they're going to show through your shading. Then make sure you rub this out first. I'm using that back-and-forth motion to quickly cover the area of the top lip with one tonal value. Notice how the shading that I'm putting in disappears into the edge of the top lip. There's no outline there. And that's because the tonal value of the line that I used in the tonal value of the shading that I'm using other same. Just make sure your initial lines and going to be darker than your shading once you've finished. I've lived the highlighted the cupid's bow white, and also that area on the bottom lip that projects towards us as a highlight on it. And I've lived at white also. Everything else, I'm shading a light layer of one tonal value. This is to block in all of the shading so that we can then build up on top of it with layers of gradual shading. Then identify the areas that are going to be the shadow values. If you squint your eyes at the photograph, you should see those two areas on either side of the top lip that are darker. Also the area underneath the lip line and then the area underneath the highlight on the lower lip. These areas are slightly darker than everything else. I'm shading them in with one more tonal value, a shade darker than my first layer. We can adjust these tonal values later, make them darker, add in extra tonal values in-between the tonal values that we have right now. But we need to indicate where at least three tonal values are in. We have the white of the highlights. We have the light gray as our blocking in tone, and then we have a slightly darker gray that is identifying where our shadow values are going to be added. 11. Project Step Four: Building Detail: We're up to our final stage now of adding in detail. This is usually the longest and most complex stage where we really knuckled down and try to see the subtle differences between tonal values. Build up the three-dimensional form of the drawing. And that's only going to come with adding in the tonal values in the correct place. I'm starting off by working on the center lip line. And if you remember back to the previous exercise where we talked about line quality, this is where you can study that center line and think about where it is darkest, where it is soft, where it is light or sharp. I'm starting by looking for the darkest parts. That small triangle area in the center is black. And then as you move along the left-hand side of the center lip line, It's quite dark coming to the corner of the mouth, also very dark in the lip line as it extends out to the left-hand side. The upper edge of it is quite sharp, but the lower edge of it is quite soft. So again, this is where we control our line quality, control the pressure of our pencil. Notice how I soften off the hard edge of the center line by shading along the bottom of it. Then as you move along this interloop line to the right-hand side, you'll notice that it is not as dark as the left-hand side. I'd say there's no black on that side until you get to the corner of the mouth on the right-hand side. Look very closely at the photograph and you'll see that where I'm erasing in this area of my drawing debt is actually a very fine broken highlight. I'm just allowing for some whitespace there that I can then shade around to make sure I have that very small highlight in there. It's right up close on the center lip line, on the lower lip. Now that I've got the center lip line and I've looked at the line quality in that line. I'm working on the left-hand side of the top lip. And if you look at the top lip, you'll see that there are lines that move along the surface of the skin of the lip. They move slightly outwards from the center. I'm using a linear shading motion, and that same direction moving slightly outwards from the center. Then as you come towards the center of Philip, they're a little bit more straight up and down. Be careful that you don't shade over the highlight and neck cupid's bow area. To bring it out. You can actually shade some of the skin above that highlight as well. Once you have some shading on either side of the highlights, you can see it as a white highlight. This in very small areas of shadow at the bottom of that heart shape. Can you see where the lips come together? In the center, there's a couple of small puffy areas. And those areas that you shade in around them, the shadow shapes that you can see. It doesn't matter how small they are. They are going to help protect those puffy areas forward. Sometimes it's those very small details that make a big difference. Especially when it comes to the three-dimensional form. Moving to the right-hand side of the top lip. And again, I'm trying to follow the direction of the texture that you can see on the skin of the loop by using a linear shading mark angled slightly outwards from the center. I am adding in a few small details as I come across them. You can see the creases on the upper lip that start at the center line. And they follow the contour of the upper lip upwards and then they disappear into the skin of the lip. Will work more on these details soon. For now, make sure you have the shadow areas shaded and I've worked on the top lip and now I'm moving to the bottom lip and adding in those shadow areas underneath the highlight. I'm very loosely following the contour of that loop. You can see the contour of the loop, the way it curves when you look at those detailed lines and textures on the lower lip. If you look at the bottom with the lower lip, there is a slightly dark area there. Any way that does not have light hitting it directly is going to be a darker tonal value in that area just underneath the bottom lip is almost facing downwards and so it's missing out on some of that light. Now adding in the shadow urea along the bottom of the center line of the lips. And working on building up the three-dimensional form, thinking about those shapes that sit beneath the loop. So we have those two tubercles on the bottom lip and you can quite clearly see the divide between them. There is a crease that goes from the center line in the middle of the bottom lip, coming downwards. After adding in center crease, I'm making my way along to the right-hand side and adding in the other creases that I can see, there's maybe four, maybe five creases there. If you look at them closely, you'll see that there is a highlight area or most of them, a light line following the contour of the bottom lip. I'm using my potty eraser to bring those out. You need to mold your eraser into a really sharp point and either draw with the eraser or just dab at the area that you want to lighten up. While I've got my eraser, I'll lighten up a few other areas. The highlight on the top lip, in particular, working along to left, adding in some of the creases that I can see there. Little bit like when we worked on the iris, I tend to just pick out the main creases or the main details there. I can see. This is a relatively quick drawing and we don't have time to put in all of the details. For me, capturing the lightness is the most important thing. I'm not really interested in drawing a hyper-realistic drawing that looks like a photograph. That is something you could move into if you wanted to. You might decide to use charcoal pencils instead and really focus in on all the tiny details and add and everything you see. But for me, I'm just picking out the main details that stick out to me that I think are really important to this pair of lips. Once I've met in those details, now I'm going along and working on them with a little bit more funness, looking at how those creases and the lip might start off dock at the scene two line and enlightened up as they come up along the upper lip. Still quite a bit of work to do here to get lips to look like they are predicting forwards and then moving backwards on either side of the face. And it's gonna come when I do that more layers of shading. It's important that you don't get discouraged by what you are drawing might look like in the ugly stage or in those initial stages before you've got your full range of tonal values in all of your details. If you're feeling frustrated, make sure you take a break and then come back. And we need to do is look and observe and draw what you see. Sometimes that changes as you go along. You might look at it and draw what you see and then come back later and see something slightly different, but at least then you've got a drawing to respond to. You can make those changes. The more you look at the photograph and the more you work on this drawing, the more you're going to see, you're not going to see it all from the very start. And that's just the nature of drawing. 12. Step Four Continued: Adding Black Points: I'm ready to add in my black points now to make sure I've got my full range of tonal values. And I'm using another pencil. This one is a Forbes green and gold pencil by Faber-Castell. Much darker than the Forbes lead. That isn't the mass techno pencil I was using before. I can get some really nice black tonal values. I'm studying the center line of the lips once again and deciding where it is, thick versus thin. With that line has a soft edge and where it has a sharp edge. Remember to use the control of the pressure of your pin. So to either, either soften off a line or darken up the line. You can also use your pencil more on its tip. If you need to get a sharper line and use it more on its side to get a softer line. I'm moving between the two pencils here using the darker one ticket in the black values and then using my other pencil to just shade around some of those areas and integrate them a little bit so you can mix the two pencils together. Once you get those black points and you might find that everything else looks a little bit lighter and you need to go around and add another layer to your shadow areas. This latest stage of the drawing is all about balancing out those tonal values. Are they light enough? Are they dark enough? If you've got them in the right place? I'm spending a bit of time reworking on those details of the lower lip, the creases of the lower lip. Each one has a highlight and a shadow line along it as well. The whole time I'm drawing, I'm always referring back to the photograph, flicking my eye back and forth between my drawing in the photograph. I'm just staring at my drawing as I work or just coloring in areas. I'm always checking with the photograph. Probably every couple of seconds or so. The trick now is to try and get those lips, especially the bottom lip, to look like it's curving outwards and then under again, that's all about the tonal values, having them in the right place and having them the correct tone. When you're drawing these creases in the loop, you don't want to have a solid line because if you look at it closely, you'll see it's kind of broken. It might be. Here's some other creases running perpendicular through it. You can practice on another piece of paper how you might draw those textures, all those broken lines. We're getting close to finishing now. A lot of it is just some back and forward reassessing what I've already done. You'll see that I'm working quite methodically in this drawing, moving from one side of the lips to the other side, and then repeating that several times. So each layer, I'm looking again, I've probably looked at its bottom lip maybe five times in detail already. But each time I see something new or maybe I see something that's correct. And so I'll leave that. But then I'll find somewhere else or I need to add something else and make a slight change or make it slightly darker. I'm having a little bit of trouble with the highlight on the lower lip. Just figuring out which parts need to be white. Which parts need to be just a light gray. So much detail in the highlights really, when you look at it closely. If you find yourself getting a little bit stuck with what to do, then think about those shapes underneath the lips again, thinking about the heart shape. Can you see that in the photograph? And how is it defined by the tonal values? Either side of that shape is slightly darker. The heart shape area itself is slightly lighter and that's what's going to push it forward in our drawing by having it slightly lighter. If you want to, you could use a cotton bud just to soften off some of the areas, particularly at the sides of the lips or along the edge of the lip. We don't want a sharp line. 13. Final Thoughts: Thanks for taking this class with me. I'd love to hear what you thought about the class and to see your final drawing. You can leave a review in the review section, add upload a photo of your drawing in the projects and resources section, I will always respond with me back to the book that you share. Well done on committing to practicing your drawing skills with this project. The only way to improve is to practice. I've included three other photographs in the resource section for you to use. Best of luck and thanks again for choosing this class.