The Human Mouth

Are you seeing a trend with my titles?
As you can tell, this next post is going to be about the human mouth. The lips/mouth are the defining feature of many people in the world. There are different shapes, sizes, pigmentations, and textures. Being able to capture that on paper is something I strive for. My drawing was based on this picture:

Ignoring the lip pencil

The mouth is something I also have struggled with as an artist, my problem was that I never knew where to start, and that is a reoccurring problem that I've always had. I would also like to learn how to properly draw teeth, but unfortunately that is not covered in this book.

Unlike my last two posts, I show you some of the beginning of my drawing. Like all of the other parts of the body, Holmes says that the human mouth can easily be drawn realistically with simple lines and measurements (68). This book teaches the simple steps to more complex drawings, and I believe that anyone of any skill level would benefit from reading it. First I started out with drawing the basic shape of the top lip a line under for where the bottom lip would be:

Next, I drew lines to connect the line at the bottom with the sides, and drew lines for contour.

Then, all there was left to do was shade! In the book in order to understand how to draw the lips, Holmes stated, "Shading in the direction of the planes of the lip to create form, curved lines to create contour" (68). I never realized how much the direction of your strokes affected the outcome of the shading. After following all of the guidelines that the book provided, here is the finished product:

I noticed that in the picture, the lips are slight pursed, causing the top lip to go upwards, therefore, I shaded upwards to mimic the affect. Overall, the book did a great of job of guiding me to draw these lips. Though, I wish I could have drawn one with teeth. Whenever I attempt to draw teeth, the person ends up looking like a monster, and I rarely ever draw smiling people. But, I believe the drawing turned out great in the end.

Is there anything I can do to improve my drawings? How do you begin to draw a mouth? And, for anybody that has advice on it, what are some tips for drawing teeth?

Book citation:

Holmes, Catherine. How to Draw Cool Stuff. Library Tales Publishing, Inc., 2013.