How to Draw a Grin

Consider using this grin as a model.

Smiling, grinning, laughing -- these are all emotions which we love to convey. They mean we are having a good time. Artists often choose to show the jovial side of their subjects. By drawing a grinning or laughing subject, the artists may hope to project that feeling to his audience.

Instructions

1. Begin by drawing the neutral face. This means getting all the proportions right, from the width of the lips to spacing of the eyes. Outlining the neutral face is crucial to the final product because you will distort this base to create the grin.

2. Draw the lips curling upwards at a rather extreme angle. You will not want to move the midline of the smile when you make this change. Instead of picturing the lips moving up the face, picture them receding into the mouth to create the upward curl.

3. Fill in the teeth. There are several concerns with the teeth, but one of the most important is considering how many can be seen. People with broader smiles (and therefore more visible teeth) have consistently been rated as having more attractive smiles.

4. Move up the eyes and nose in your drawing. The entire face should be slightly pushed upwards. This includes the corners of the nose, corners of the eyes, and the eyelids. You don't want to distort the face too much with these changes, but it should also be noticeable.

5. Add in the smile lines. These are typically lines which go from the corners of the nose to the corners of the lips and a little bit beyond. However, they may also appear underneath the eyes. These are different from crow's-feet, but older subjects may also have accented crow's-feet.

Tips & Warnings

• A grin changes the entire face, not just the mouth. The difference between a real smile and a fake smile is that a fake smile only happens in the lower face, but a real smile encompasses the eyes.

References

• Your Dentistry Guide: Anatomy of a Smile