How to Draw a Human Mouth in Conte Crayon

Drawing a mouth is easy once you know the trick of it. Up to that point it can be very difficult to draw anything but a cartoon mouth. The tricks are not that hard to learn individually, but until I got them, it was almost impossible to make the human mouth look real.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Conte crayon
• Tortillon or stump (pointed cardboard blender)
• Drawing paper or sketchbook
• Workable matte fixative
• Art history book with images by classical realist artists like Leonardo da Vinci
• Photo references large enough to show detailed mouths

1. 
   Examples of different mouth drawings, all stylized.

   Draw a mouth as realistically as you can to start with. Date this drawing. When you have practiced and gained the tricks for realistic drawing, it'll show you how much you've grown. Some examples of mouths drawn with serious, common problems illustrate this step. Does yours look like one of these?
   
   Every one of these mouth drawings is stylized in some way. Most are outline drawings, the cartoon mouth to the upper right is very recognizable and close to a smiley. Expression gets carried in the shape of the mouth and especially the line between the lips.
   
   If you shaded the mouth you drew, was the shading the same on the upper lip and lower lip? Follow the next step into more styles of drawing mouths that may imply realism even if they aren't detailed.

2. 
   Mouth seen in profile showing upper lip slanting in, lower lip slanting out to catch light.

   It's easier to show this in profile than full front: the upper lip slants in toward where the lips meet. Thus it is entirely in shadow. The lower lip juts out and carries a strong highlight, especially at the center. It will always seem lighter than the upper lip, and the only hard dark line is where the lips actually meet. At the corner of the lip, the upper lip curves slightly up and then angles back. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.
   
   Under the lower lip there is a cast shadow almost as dark as the upper lip, depending on how strong the lighting is.
   
   Sketch this profile mouth and see how it fits between the chin and the skin above the upper lip.

3. 
   Mouth in stark contrast, defined by shadows.

   You can take advantage of this shadowed upper lip effect to do a strikingly realistic mouth in solid dark and white -- here the upper lip is shaped specifically to that person, the lower lip is implied by the shape of the shadow under it and the nose is implied by the shape of the shadow under it.
   
   Try drawing this from a photo reference. Just outline all the shadow areas around the mouth, transfer those outlines to your sketchbook and fill them in solidly. You'll be surprised at how realistic the result is!
   
   Comics artists traditionally use this approach for men's' lips especially, so that they don't appear to be wearing lipstick. The lower lip is colored just with skin color and the shadow under it implies its existence.

4. 
   Mouth in 3/4 view, shown in lines and pure darks.

   In 3/4 view, the most flattering portrait view, the mouth becomes asymmetrical. This is a line drawing just showing the darkest shadows, but not filling in any of the shading. We'll add shading in the next stage. This is drawn from a phone-camera shot of my own mouth. Use a web cam, phone camera or digital camera to take a picture of your own mouth, relaxed, with your lips closed to draw from after copying mine.
   
   The lines for the shadow under my lower lip and for the edge of the shadow over my chin are not connected with anything. The shading will somewhat connect them and show where light and dark values define details of the lips. The only hard dark line on a closed mouth is where the lips meet -- and that line, often turning slightly down at an angle at the end where a muscle at the side of the lips moves them, shows expression. Lips change shape constantly with mouth expression. This is one of the things that can make them very hard to draw until you're used to all the variations.
   
   On a 3/4 view, the lips are not symmetrical. One side is about twice as long as the other, because the far side is seen at a slant that shortens it.

5. 
   Mouth shaded and showing underside of nose as well as cheek shadows

   Using a stump or tortillon, shade the mouth realistically. Follow your photo for where light and dark areas are. Stumps are two-ended cardboard blenders, tortillons are cheaper one-ended cardboard blenders. Both are very good for shading pencil or Conte crayon with lighter values than you could get by just applying the stick.
   
   Following the light and dark shadows around the mouth is as important as getting the mouth's light and dark tones accurate for realistic drawing. Trace only the deepest darks when transferring a photo for a portrait. Fill in the rest by carefully copying in lighter shades of gray or sanguine, one level of darkness lighter each time. Work your way up to the lightest shadows or down to the darkest, but think of everything to do with the mouth as irregular shapes of light or dark.
   
   When drawing a face, instead of putting a hard outline around the face, try putting a dark background behind the face so that you can see the edge of the face as a line between dark and light. Outlines don't look that realistic because they only occur between lips and at the edge of eyelashes when looking at real faces.

6. 
   Smiling mouth with lipstick, showing bright teeth shading toward the ends.

   Drawing someone's mouth in a big toothy grin is very different -- and this trick is important. We know teeth are white. We're barraged every day with commercials on how to make teeth whiter and brighter. But in a realistic drawing or painting, they aren't -- and the lines between them can't be hard outlines or the person will look as if they have very bad teeth no matter how well shaped or white the individual teeth are.
   
   Follow the demonstration for how to draw a grinning mouth showing plenty of teeth. Draw and shade in the lips first. Lightly draw a line under the teeth, but not on them. Fill in very dark under that line, that's where the inside of the mouth is very shadowed, between that and the top of the upper lip.
   
   Now shade very lightly inward from the corners of the mouth, about a quarter to a third of the way in. Treat the teeth as one continuous band of shaded white -- bright white in the center but shading to a value a little lighter or about like the skin at the darkest farthest corners of the mouth. Now slightly notch the bottom of that tooth-band to imply individual teeth. Do not draw lines between them, no line you draw is going to be fine enough to keep from looking like a huge gap.
   
   You can shade the entire band if the teeth are in shadow, and they will still register as white teeth as long as they are the lightest shaded area in the drawing, comparable to the whites of shaded eyes. If you're going in color, use a soft blue-gray to shade teeth, something like a slate color or mix gray and light blue. This also makes whites pop out as lighter.
   
   The smiling person's wearing lipstick to show how to shade lipstick. The highlight on her lower lip is glossy and dramatic, though not as bright as her middle teeth. Creases at the corners of her mouth are stronger and more dramatic, because that crease comes from the smile muscles.
   
   Try drawing smiles from magazines. Do them in pure value drawings, try turning the photo reference upside down while drawing and draw it upside down too, in order to ignore what those odd shapes are supposed to be in favor of drawing them as they are.
   
   Human beings respond to smiles and mouth expressions by instinct. This is great for being able to convey a lot with few lines, but it can be confusing until you're used to the real shapes, values and shadows around the mouth. Getting the shadows under the nose and above the chin right helps to make a mouth look realistic. Sketch often and enjoy!

Tips & Warnings

• Sketch the entire mouth in light tones using the stump, then darken the shadows with the stick of Conte. It's easier to blend in misplaced light marks.
• Sketch mouths frequently in different positions. Use a mirror and do many sketches of your own mouth, smiling or not, at different angles.
• Try to reduce your mouth to a single thick and thin line of the upper lip and a small line under it for the shadow under your lower lip.
• Draw the teeth as a single bar of teeth and shade it as it curves around inside the mouth. It will look brighter for this shading.
• Don't outline entirely around the mouth. Even when mouths are outlined with a brush in makeup, that outline is thick and heavy and usually filled in with a dark color inside. Use light and medium tonal values to define the lower lip, don't use hard outlines anywhere but between the lips.

[momose]

on 9/3/2009 Telling someone how to draw can be even more difficult than the actual drawing. Nicely done here, Robert. Thanks! *****

[robertsloan2]

on 10/26/2007 Thank you! I'm going to do one on hands sometime too, hands and feet. I've got some concepts going that break down some difficult types of drawing like portraits into multiple relatively easy articles.

[beto13]

on 10/25/2007 Hello, wow..good tips i could draw a little and to me the mouth and hands are just a very hard thing to do..specially when the mouth is open..hope you put up more tips.=0)