Introduction

Hello everyone, its carameldough.

In this tutorial, I will be showing you how to draw mouths, lips and teeth in ClipStudio Paint. Not only how to draw mouths, lips and teeth but how to stylize them and how to draw different facial expressions. With this tutorial will help to make your characters look lively. You will also learn about anatomy and structure of mouth, lips and teeth.

 

Key element of the mouth

1. Lips

2. Teeth

3. Gum

4. Tongue

 

 

Tool I use for throughout this tutorial are..

-Blend tool>Blend

-Paint tool>Thick Paint>paint and apply brush

-Pencil>Mechanical Pencil

Paint and apply brush is used for base and shade colours.

Blend tool is for mixing colours together while mechanical pencil is for outline and sketch

 

The Anatomy

The anatomy of the mouth is made up of the orbicularis oris (large oval-shaped muscle that surrounds the orifice of the mouth and forms the majority of the lips). The muscles interconnect and meet at the nodes on the orbicular oris.

The muscles are attached around the orbicularis oris and pull on it to form facial expressions.

The mouth muscles beneath the skin's surface is what creates mouth expressions.

A Normal adult mouth has 32 teeth and 28 teeth if you minus the wisdom teeth.

• Incisors (8 total) front teeth

• Canines (4 total) next to incisors, pointy teeth, can be exaggerated for vampires or feral creatures

• Premolars (8 total) 2 on each side of the mouth

• Molars (8 total)

 

When drawing teeth some artist tend to draw too many teeth or don’t curve the teeth inwards. Teeth actually sit in the mouth in a horse shoe shape.

The upper jaw is attached to the skull itself meaning, it doesn’t move when the mouth opens or closes, only the lower jaw does that. The upper jaw is always parallel to the eyes. The lower jaw is more flexible, able to move and open at different angles.

 

The Basic Forms/Structure

The cylinder fits between the mouth and chin.

Draw the lips on a bloated 3d cylinder can as lips are on a 3d surface not a 2d surface. Sketch in the centre line in the location and across line section.

The lips should wrap around the cylinder and try avoiding drawing lips on a flat surface but on a bloated 3d cylinder instead.

At the top of the lip there are three smaller forms and on the bottom, there are two smaller forms.

The philtrum (the skin connecting the nose to the mouth) (1), Cupid’s bow (2), the central tubercles (The bottom of the lip under the cupid’s bow) (3), the commissures (or where the top and bottom lips connect) (4), the lower lip (6) and the upper lip (5)

When looking at the lips at angle the central tubercles and the overlaps each other creating depth.

Varying these elements produces several lip designs.

The landmarks on the lips will determine the width and angle of the lips, as seen in the diagram above.

The centre line will help you find the placement of the centre tubercles and cupid bow of the top lip, as well as the bottom lip.

The prominence of the centre tubercle can vary as the tubercle is a fatty tissue and can be smaller or bigger on some people

 

These are the proportion of the mouth on the face both side view angle and front view angle. The corners of mouth meet up with the pupils of eyes. Meanwhile side view angle looks like a staircase

The Planes

Simplify the lips to a low-poly wireframe grid, to better grasp which areas have the most volume and thickness. Draw the wireframe to understand the form of the lips, with this information this can help an artist to increase their mental library which in turn helps you draw from imagination and help you come up with different designs for lips.

When drawing side view of lips there are three planes, think of the planes as if three stairs from the chin to the base of the nose. Generally the top lip has a sight dominance over bottom lip not the other way around(show in diagram). The mouth is sloped at a relaxed angle and is not completely straight.

 

The Lighting

Lips are moistened either by lip gloss, lip stick or saliva. The highlight will appear brighter and sharper compared to the skin. Unless the skin is moistens as well.

Shadows

The darkest tone of shadows will usually be around the creases and corners. Core shadows will be around at the top lip and bottom lip.

When shading, determine where the light is hitting the plane and where the light source is coming from.

If a plane is facing a light, it will be brighter and if a plane is facing away it will be darker. To figure out the light source determine the direction of the cast shadow and where the highlight is.

The Colour and Size

The natural colour of lips are pinks, reds and browns as there is more red hue in the lips.

To change the size of the lips, increase or decrease the thickness in lips to the size or shape you desire for your character. You can decrease or increase the volume in the top lip or bottom lip. You can remove the cupid bow depending on your art style.

The Common Mistakes

Teeth:

When drawing teeth some artist tend to draw too many teeth or don’t curve the teeth inwards. (too many teeth or not getting the curve)

When shading teeth, the shading can range from light greys.

Black for deep pockets of shadow in the mouth.

Black outline on the teeth make sense for cartoon style or own style but not realism as in real life we don’t have outline, shadows and ambient occlusion can serve as guide for outlines. Only do dark lines in realism if you want a gap between the teeth.

When colouring teeth the colours are normally off white meaning whites with grey or yellowish tinge, this help with highlights as highlights are white and you can’t do highlights if the base colour of the teeth are white.

 

Lips:

Making the mouth too low or high on the face, when instead it should be ½ way to the bottom of the nose. The top lip is generally smaller while the bottom is bigger. Depending on the style draw the iconography of the lips can be useful but it is best to draw the form. In side view the lips don’t sit on each other, it’s more slanted on a angle.

 

The Male and Female lips

Generally, the differences are:

Men

• Thinner than a woman

• A more flat appearance in side view

• The planes appear sharper

 

Women

• Fuller than a man

• The planes are subtler

• The bottom lip recedes more in side view.

 

The Facial Expressions (steps)

Capture the expression of the mouth by breaking it down to simple shape.

Determine areas of the mouth must be modified to represent one expression or another; to convey joy, the corners rise, to convey sadness, we draw them lower than usual. To convey anger, we show an open mouth (screaming) complete with teeth and gums.

Use the mouth guard trick to determine the shape of mouth, this helps to simplify the mouth thus making it easier to draw. The lips can help transmit different expressions and emotions like sad, fearful, angry and happiness.

The Different Styles

Once an artist knows the basic forms, structure and key elements. They can start to draw in different styles and proportions such as anime, comics, realistic, semi realistic and cartoon style. To draw in different style an artist can exaggerated or simplify the design of the lips.

Face and Mouth Expressions

Once you understand the human mouth, you can then draw human emotions. The mouth on the face is the main element of facial expressions, this is what gives faces their emotion such as happy, grumpy, excited, angry, sly and confused.

Bye now, have fun drawing :)