DRAWING MOUTHS
The letter M is my visual analogy when drawing lips.
At least one M can be found stretched out on the top of the upper lip, and sometimes the crease between the two lips appears as a very, very stretched-out M (mmmmaybe that is just my way of seeing them!!)
What you want to avoid from the start is the look on the lower right which is an oversimplified prep to grade two interpretation of the lines of the lips.
So, the most important part of drawing the lips is getting the directions and angles of the lines down as well as you can before commencing any shading. In the full lips example on the left, once I had the lines in and the minimum of shading (with an 8B), I then used a tissue to rub the graphite all over. Then it was a case of deepening the darks and erasing the highlights.
DRAWING TEETH
Maybe you remember from the tips section of the foundation drawing course that the best way to draw teeth is to draw only what is adjacent to them, avoiding the cheesy cartoony look that is inevitable if you try to describe an outline of each tooth that you see. Follow the same approach as for the exercise above, get the lines right (just lightly hinting at the teeth), get some basic shading in, spread it all over, deepen the darks and erase the highlights.
Now have a go at lips from the side, puckering/kissing lips (and any other lips that aren't tied down)
DRAWING MOUTHS IN A PROFILE VIEW
Drawing mouths and teeth in profile views gives an extra challenge to some, but as long as you practice heads in profile enough times and observe the lines, angles and positions of the mouth and other features, it is not really any harder.
DRAWING A PUCKERED KISSY MOUTH (when on earth am I going to need to draw this?…I hear you ask)
Well, who knows maybe never but it is good practice as it is a bit different again from all the other mouths you have tried to draw here. It definitely has more obvious crinkling and most times the middle M becomes more obvious too.
HAVE A GO AT THESE MOUTHS SEEN FROM ALL DIFFERENT ANGLES
