How to Draw a Mouth in Pixel Art Photos

Draw a mouth with pixel art tools.

Pixel art photos are digitized photographs that have been modified in a program with pixel-editing abilities. Photos can be manipulated at the pixel level to achieve effects ranging from simple touch-ups to major changes to the content of the photo. To create a realistic looking mouth using pixel-level drawing tools, pay close attention to the pixels surrounding the mouth image you're modifying. The mouth you draw will need to blend in seamlessly with them.

Things You'll Need

• Picture editing software (e.g. Windows Paint)

Instructions

1. Choose a photo of a face whose mouth you want to modify. For fun, try to create a smile on someone who is never seen with a smile, like George Washington.

2. Load the photo into your pixel-editing application, then zoom in so you can see the individual pixels.

3. Select your application's color eyedropper, then click the eyedropper cursor on the outline of the photo's mouth. This action will load the color of the mouth outline into your application's active color for painting.

4. Select a paintbrush with a 1-pixel radius, then begin tracing the mouth outline in your photo.

5. Zoom out to view the result of your outlining work. If the mouth doesn't look realistic, repeat Step 3 with the following change: Separate the outline into a chain of segments based on color. All pixels that have more or less the same color will constitute a segment. When the color changes, start a new segment.

6. Shape the lips: Using the instructions for creating a realistic mouth outline, create the upper and lower lips. Watch carefully for more color variation here: The lips may take on bright values from a specular (shiny) highlight, or dark values for the pixels near the mouth's opening.

7. Complete the mouth by tracing over the mouth's opening.

8. Smooth the jagged edges: Locate a region you painted that looks jagged, or where the color transition isn't smooth. Apply the color eyedropper tool to that region.

9. Call up your application's function for creating and editing colors. Notice the following parameters of the color you chose in Step 8: "Hue," "Saturation" and "Brightness" ("Brightness" may be called "Luminance" in your application).

   These values are the components of the color you selected. In particular, the Brightness component is how light or dark the color is.

10. Create a new color that will be lighter than the current color: Subtract 50 from the current color's "Brightness" number, and save the resulting color in a new slot in your palette.

11. Repeat Step 10 to create new colors; however, instead of subtracting 50 from the "Brightness" number, subtract 40, then 30 and so on, creating a new color after each subtraction.

12. Repeat Step 10 again, except create darker colors this time: Add 10, 20, 30 and so on to the "Brightness" number to create five new, progressively darker colors.

13. Exit your application's color editing tool and reselect the 1-pixel paintbrush. Use the new colors you made to change the color from Step 8 into a blend of colors that changes gradually from light to dark, or vice versa as needed. This action will smooth out the abrupt color changes, making your image more realistic.

14. Repeat Steps 8 through 13 for each region with abrupt color changes. When you're finished, the smile you've added should blend naturally with the original photo.

References

• Gas 13 (freelance pixel artist): Handmade Anti-aliasing
• Wayuki's Place: Making Faces
• Gimp Tutorials: Retouch Images with Gimp