Procreate: How to Draw Lips - From Sketch to Finished Digital Painting

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Lee and I'm a digital fantasy add is from Denmark. In this class, I'll teach you how to draw lips in a realistic style. In Procreate. We'll be going over everything from reference and sketch, color, shading and details. So you can follow along and complete your own lips study. I have other classes that can supplement this one, like painting eyes or noses or sketching phases, painting skin and drawing here, they can all help form a base for your portrait skills. To make it a little easier for you guys to approach this class. You can find my sketch and reference for this project in the resources, so you can follow along from there. The brush I use throughout the class is also available to you. So when you're ready, get out your iPad file, procreate, and let's get started. 2. Reference and Sketch: Here's the reference we'll be using today is royalty free and you can find it in the resources. It once again, a cropped form, a larger photo. So please excuse that it isn't high-definition. I have the reference of in the viscera cough, while I work in Procreate. So it doesn't obscure my view of the canvas, but you can of course, use Procreate own reference feature should you want to. In a fresh canvas? Let's start the sketch. Firstly, we're going to break the bottom and top lip into basic shapes. The bottom can be simplified to a rectangle with a point at each end signifying the edge of the mouth. The top lip start with a line parallel to the bottom, put planting into the bottom before the edge of the mouth, on the top line of the lip in a parallel line ending the previous one. Correct. Any lines that seem off before moving on. Now back to the lower lip. Notice these two balls of fullness. The line should curl around these shapes before connecting back to the atrium, the mouth. I usually sketch all in the same layer and just erase as I go. We can sketch in multiple layers if you want. The teeth will be very simple lines for now, since we don't see them. For the upper lip, round out the edges by the teeth. It should handle the lowest in the middle. Then draw two triangles to the very top and connect them in the rounded lines to the edge of the mouth. This leaves us with a nice simple mouth sketch. Now you can make any adjustments. I use the liquefy tool to shift some lines and push up the corners of the mouth. I also copied the sketch layer and paste an extra one just in case. Before setting the original one to alpha lock and coloring it brown. I keep the extra black sketch on for now, so it's easier for you guys to see it though. But I will turn it off later in the process. Now we're ready to move on to color. Let's recap sketching lips. Find a good reference. Break the lips into basic shapes. Pay attention to the fullness of the lower lip. Keep the teeth simple. At two triangles to the top lip and rounded out. Use Liquify to make any adjustments. 3. Color and Shading: Make a new layer under the sketch for the skin, pick a color. This one is a very light yellow tone. And use the selection tool to mark and fill a square in a layer on top of that, you said D saturated red to fill in the lips but erase anything overlapping the teeth. They get their own layer in-between the skin and lips filled in with a light gray. This way we can easily go back and adjust different aspects of the study. With your base tone down. Let's start with the skin. Make a new layer on top of the skin layer set to clipping mask. Now we can only draw on top of the original square shape. Use a shading color that is darker than the base tone, but shift the hue a little, then start laying it down according to the reference. I use my basic blending brush too softly lay down the shadows, mostly on the left side of the image since the light appears to be coming from the right. Also shade just around the lip shape all the way around. Since this help them look three-dimensional. If it looks a little too harsh, then use the smudge tool to blend. Now pick a dark brown to get some deeper shadows down. There's a small one under the lips, a cast shadow, and some fainter ones on the shadow side and on the top of the lips. To contrast the shading, I choose a lighter tone than the base to sunlight highlighting in this layer also. But you can keep as many separate clipping masks as you want if it helps you process the light areas on the opposite side of the shadows. At this point, I turn off the black sketch and only keep the lighter brown copy for now. Going to the teeth layer, used medium grays to define the lines between the teeth and show the cast shadow of the upper lip. Gradually go darker, keeping mostly to the outer edge of the mouth where the least light reaches the teeth. When it comes to teeth, I find less is more. If you go overboard the end up looking to define another place. Used almost white to add a few highlights where the light refract. The light reflects off the smooth surface of the teeth onto the reps. I no longer need the sketch, so I turn it off completely. Correct. Any roughness around the lip line and use the smudge tool to blend out the edges or the corners of the lips tend not to be very defined line. In a new clipping mask, use a deeper color to darken the top lip and the edges of the bottom one. The top tend to be darker since it curves into the mouth and stone stick out as much. The bottom one will have a cast shadow from the top, but stick out enough to catch light before curving down to the chin. In another mask, I use a light value to lay down some highlights to get a sense of the lightest to darkest values. Since we can work in as many layers as we want, we can add highlights from the start, which I appreciate. The middle of the bottom lip has a permanent highlight and so does the top edge of the upper lip. Going back to the shading mask underneath, I start adding some color variation to the top lip. This is because the model is wearing some sort of gloss, making the lips reflective. From a distance. The upper lip looks all dark besides the highlight. But when you look closer, they are lighter shade in the small wrinkles just by the opening of the mouth. You can do all of this in separate layers if you want to darken the edges of the mouth to help shape the lips and fate to what the center shared around the opening of the mouth of the same color and a little on the side of the lower lip. To make it a little more lively, I choose a more saturated color to add some variety to the shading we just did. A nice way to evaluate depth is to copy the whole canvas and paste it in a layer on top. Then go to adjustments and remove saturation from this layer, making it gray scale. Without color, it's much easier to gauge the values. Gender reference to K scale too. So we can compare. The edges of the mouth, could be darkened, but otherwise the rest is pretty good. Just needing some subtle variety. Dark in the teeth of the corners of the mouth as needed, before going back to the lips and adding lighter variety to the shaded parts. This really helps it look more realistic. Then I faded out the edges of the lips in the base layer a little more. Since we did the skin at the very start, go back and add more shading when needed in comparison to the now shaded lips. When you have all the basic shading down, I find it much easier to spot where something is lacking. So just jumping into it, you can always return to any section of your painting. This concludes the section that we're ready to move on to details. To recap. Placed on bass tones in separate layers. Shade the skin and clipping masks. Shade the teeth with gray shades. Blend out the edges of the lips. Dark and the top lip and add highlights in separate layer. Add variety to the shading colors. Copy the Canvas and D saturate to check the values. Go back and forth between the different areas as needed. 4. Details and Finishing Touches: In a new mask on the lips. Under the highlights, we can add the wrinkly lines to the lips. Make the lines curve to convey the rounded shape of the lips. You don't have to make each line exact to the reference, just get the basic sense of it. Next. Pick a shade lighter than the lip in the area you're working and use this to emphasize the area in-between the lines would use made. This makes these areas look higher than the lines within the wrinkles. Go back to the skin and defined a shading further. On the light side, I choose a reddish shade to blend the lip into the skin a little bit. Around the upper lip, use a light shade to emphasize the lip line. Extend this color in a faint line above the point of the cupid's bow. I keep the lines quickly since it gives more of an organic look. This color can also be used to add some texture to the shaded areas of the skin. Our skin is marble smoother throw on the bottom which of the lower lip? I worked in a bit of the skin color since the shape of the lips and the actual lip line doesn't always align completely. Finally, we can define the highlights of the lip overall to make them look shiny in a fresh layer as to not affect anything else. I go in with an almost white tone and paint the areas with the same quickly approaches before. Then the highlights out by adding fainter strokes around the areas and subtle highlights. What ever found in the reference. With that, we've finished. Let's recap. Outlines to both lips. Emphasize by adding lighter tones between the lines. Highlight the skin above the lips and cupid's bow. Define the lip highlight for Shine. 5. Final Thoughts and Class Project: Here we have to finish lip study. Now you see me illustrate lips. So now it's your turn. The class project for today is to illustrate your own lips study. You can find your own reference if you want, or you can use one I've provided along with my sketch. If you complete the project to share it on here, I would love to see it. Thank you so much for taking my class. I hope it's helpful to you. Should you want to see more from me? You can check out their other classes on my page. Have fun creating and bye for now.