In this drawing tutorial, I will demonstrate how to draw lips accurately, from any perspective, so that you will feel confident the next time you need to draw lips. It is not an easy process to draw lips since the forms are intricate and they vary from person to person. However, with practice, just like any other aspect of drawing, sketching lips gets much simpler. Before we move on to the actual exercise of drawing lips, let’s first make sure that we have a solid grasp of the forms that we will be drawing, as they are essential to getting it right.
The most effective technique to acquire the skill of drawing lips is to first acquire a comprehensive understanding of the forms, and then to learn by first looking at examples and then drawing the lips yourself.
How to Draw the Lips in Any Angle
Understanding the shapes of the lips is the first step in drawing them from any perspective. This method is far more effective than simply blindly duplicating different angles from art courses or reference materials. First, you should have an understanding of the shapes, and then you should obtain references of various angles and analyse them. I’ll say it again: if you want to draw lips accurately, you need to understand the shapes first.
There are a few different approaches that can be taken to accomplish this goal. One approach is to examine one’s own lips in the mirror, as well as the lips of one’s friends and loved ones. An additional approach is to examine a sculpture or a three-dimensional model. All of these different techniques are effective forms of exercise.
Drawing Lips – Understanding the Shapes
The ability to draw the lips and mouth depends on your comprehension of the shapes of the forms to such a great extent that you simply cannot disregard them in this context. Let’s go through the forms you need to be able to imagine in your head before you start putting them down on canvas. I’ve found that a decent method to do this is to go through a list of tips about how to draw these shapes, and then show you some examples of what they look like after they’re drawn.
Drawing Lips – A Cylindrical Shape
The mouth forms a cylinder around the teeth when viewed from the outside. The corners of the mouth are located further back than the centre portion. The mouth is rounded outwardly.
Imagine a building that is round like a cylinder and has windows all the way around it. If the building were shaped like a rectangle, you would have a far better view of the opposite side of the structure as you approached the building face on one of the building’s sides.
The same is true for the lips; keep in mind that due to the form of the mouth being cylindrical, it is difficult to discern the far side of the lips when seen from certain angles, in fact from most angles.
Drawing the Planes of Upper Lip vs Lower Lip
The planes of the upper lip are concave and rectangular, whilst the planes of the bottom lip are extremely convex and round in shape. Naturally, this differs from person to person. Having said that, thinking of lips in this way, in general, can assist draw many different versions.
Conclusion
Because the lips are such an essential component of the face, it is essential for artists who specialise in drawing realism, faces, and other similar subjects to have a solid grasp on how to draw them. Learning to draw lips can be a useful talent that you can apply into a wide variety of forms and genres of art; this is true even if you are not interested in any of the art forms listed above.