How to Draw Lips from the Side + Shading

Hey, I'm Darlene and you're watching a Rapid Fire Art tutorial. In this video, I'll show you how to draw lips from the side, and how to shade them step by step. I'll be using a really smooth drawing paper. You can use an HB pencil, or something softer, like a 4B, to shade darker values more easily. You can use a hard eraser, or a kneadable one, for higher precision. To blend, I'll use a tissue and a homemade blending stump. For more info on tools and alternatives, read the description box below. The first step is to draw a very faint triangle. Mine is about 7 by 5.5 centimeters, in case you're wondering. This side of our triangle can be angled in any direction to give the mouth the appearance of an overbite, normal bite, or underbite. I'm going with an overbite, but feel free to choose something else. I'll show you some examples a little bit later. The next step is to split the triangle into two sections to divide the top and bottom lip. You can either draw a single line going across, or if you want to part the lips for a slightly open mouth, you can draw two lines. This space is going to be the opening of the mouth. Now that we have some guidelines in place, we can finally draw the actual set of lips. Let's start at the corner here, creating a bracket shape. We have a rough guideline laid out for our top lip, so let's follow it loosely, drawing a more natural, curvy-looking lip shape. When we get down to this part of our guideline, let's draw a wavy shape that extends toward the corner of the mouth. Where the lips touch, follow your guidelines more closely. Let's work on the bottom lip. I'm going to curve this lip quite a lot right here, but of course you're welcome to draw whatever shape that you like. When we get to the horizontal line, instead of going along it, we're going to draw past it, giving the drawing a more three-dimensional feel. What we're drawing right here is the other side of the bottom lip, which is only visible to us from this viewpoint because the mouth is open. We still need to draw the top edge of this lip, but only partially. Try not to let these two lines touch. If you want, you can also draw the other side or far side of your top lip. Now let's go up here and extend our stroke upward to form the upper lip. Do the same thing for the lower lip slash chin. I'm drawing a deep curve here for a shapely chin. We're almost done with our line work. Draw a very faint outline or rim around your top and bottom lip while using the guidelines as a loose reference. At the very front of your top lip, start your stroke much lower than the guideline for the cupid's bow. Instead of drawing a straight line all the way down, I'm making the rim of the lip more curvy so it looks as natural as possible. Let's draw the rim for the bottom lip as well. If you want to customize your drawing further, adjust the angle of the front part of your triangle for an overbite, normal bite, or underbite. You can also section the space for each lip differently to make them bigger or smaller. Now once you're happy with your line work, we're just going to erase all of those unneeded guidelines. We should now have a faintly drawn pair of lips. If your line drawing is too dark, it'll be a good idea to lighten up the graphite now because the appearance of outlines in our final work could make the drawing look less realistic. The next step is to draw wrinkles along each lip. Think of the lip in 3D and draw curves that follow or wrap around the shape. These are called contour lines. Again, we're going to keep our strokes extremely light so mistakes will be easier to erase. You can use the edge of the lip to help with forming the very first contour line. As the surface of the lip curves toward us, the viewer, the wrinkles will appear straighter. If it starts looking too predictable or patterned, you can randomize the wrinkle length or the spacing between them. For the top lip, I like to draw wrinkles mainly along the bottom edge. To make them look more 3D, you can make the lip's edge bumpy so the skin looks as though it's scrunched up. Okay, once you're happy with the placement and shape of each wrinkle, let's start shading. First, choose where you want your light source to come from. As always, mine is located in the top left. Then, let's work out roughly where the light will be brightest and where the shadows will be. To do that, think about the shape of each lip in 3D. Work out where the surface faces the light directly and where it starts to curve away. As the surface curves away from the light, even the tiniest bit, it will appear darker and darker, so you really want to consider even the most subtle plane changes. If you want to learn more about light and how to shade, please visit the shading tutorial in the description before you continue. Other things to consider are reflected light and cast shadows, but I'll talk more about those when we get to it. If you can, create a rough shading plan in your head, or scribble it down on a separate sheet of paper so you can come back and reference it like a map as you shade. Starting with the bottom lip, I'm going to shade along the entire lip minus the area in the middle, where the lip faces the light directly. I'm going to shade using a method called contour shading, which consists of lines that follow the curvature of my subject. Since we've already drawn lip wrinkles, we can use them as guides. Shade toward the area you want to highlight, making sure to feather your stroke out at the end of each pencil stroke, to get a gradual fade. To shade smoothly, keep your strokes as close together as possible. You can use a thick, blunt pencil to make the process easier. Up here, we're going to shade downward, toward the brightest area of skin. If you feel as though your wrinkles aren't shapely enough, shade the space between each wrinkle so it forms an arch, instead of shading straight across from one wrinkle to the next. The arch helps to make each one look 3D, because the shape of the shadow informs the viewer that the surface is bumpy, instead of smooth. If you shade straight across from one wrinkle to the next, without the arch shape, the effect will be quite different, as you can see here. Keep in mind that as you work toward wrinkles which are facing away from you, the dips in the skin may become less and less apparent, due to the fact that we're viewing these particular wrinkles from the side, instead of straight on. So where the surface of the lip faces away from me, over on the left, I'm toning down on those arches. If you're afraid to make mistakes, shade lightly so you can see roughly how your drawing will look, before you decide to darken it up. I think it looks pretty good, so I'm going to start increasing my pressure, introducing darker values. Once you darken the drawing, the form will start to take shape. Where the top and bottom lip are touching, let's shade really dark. Also shade the wrinkles right here quite a bit darker as well. Feather your stroke out at the end, so the tail of the wrinkle fades out nicely. For the next step, here's a close up example. To make the space between each individual wrinkle look nice and plump, create a gradual transition from dark to light. My shading is darkest close to the wrinkle, and then lightest where the skin faces toward the light, where it's most plump. As I work toward the left, where the lips are parted, I'm going to shade lighter, because the surface here is more open to the light, than compared to the previous area that I was shading. Let's shade the inner part of the lip really dark, because it's inside the mouth, an area where the light has a difficult time illuminating. Any surface that isn't facing the light directly will be in shadow, with the exception of reflected light, which we'll talk about in a bit. These lip wrinkles along the top lip look as though they'll disappear as soon as I shade, so I will need to darken them beforehand. Again, shade toward the brightest area of the lip, and follow the contour as you go. I'm just laying down a medium layer of graphite, not too dark. When you start shading the dark shadows, consider adding some reflected light, to give the area more dimension. The darker the shadow, the more apparent the reflected light. To see the effectiveness of this seemingly small detail, here's what the drawing looks like without the reflected light, for comparison. The reflected light helps the viewer perceive the lip as a curved form, and it also helps separate the different areas of the lip, so things don't start blending together in the shadows. It's a great way to create boundaries, without having to use harsh outlines. Reflected light is light that bounces off of a surface, and hits another. I have light rays bouncing off the bottom lip, and illuminating the shadow area along the top lip. To shade the surrounding skin, we're going to use a different technique. This one's called circularism. It's comprised of many circular shapes overlapping each other, and it's great for shading skin. The more circles you overlap, the smoother your shading will be. Let's just start out with a light, even layer of graphite to begin, and then we'll worry about shadows later. The important thing right now is to avoid shading areas that you want to highlight, and we need to make our drawing a different shade from the paper that we're drawing on, so that it can look 3D. Keep a fairly loose grip on your pencil, and keep drawing circles until you get a nice, even layer. It may be easier to do this with a thick, blunt pencil, instead of a sharp one. That's especially if you tend to draw heavy handedly, or if you haven't quite gotten the hang of consistent pressure control. Take your time overlapping your circles until the drawing becomes as smooth as it can be. I'm going to shade a dark shadow below the bottom lip, because it's facing away from my light source. To save time, I'm going to go ahead and shade super dark right out of the gate. Again, if you want to be on the safe side, I suggest working it up in layers, instead of drawing it very dark on your first pass. Up here we have the philtrum. Let's shade along that valley. The darker you shade, the deeper the valley will appear, to a certain extent. As you work down toward the lip, reduce pressure to feather your shading out, as the form curves into the light. Also, when shading up here, keep in mind that the nose may cast a shadow, and it can affect the intensity of any values that are close by. To make the cheek appear full, I'm going to avoid shading it darker, and instead shade the area below it. You can shade your drawing in many ways, to achieve the shape that you desire. I want this part of the lip to curve in, so I'll shade it darker. Let's soften out the edge right here, so the skin around the corner of the mouth doesn't look as though it's stretched thin. To add a smile line at the corner of the mouth, continue shading this area darker. Once your shading is as smooth as you can get it, grab a soft tissue, wrap it around your finger, and blend the graphite so it becomes less grainy looking. Let's avoid blending the lips, because we're going to use a more precise technique for that. To avoid unwanted smudges, use a different spot on your tissue when it becomes too dirty, and avoid blending from a dark area, into a lighter one. Once you're done, look for any inconsistencies in your shading, and fix them, by either adding more graphite, or removing it. To remove graphite, I like to use a kneadable eraser, which allows me to erase very precisely. I just roll it to a fine tip, and dab those blemishes away, if any. You may need to repeat the process of blending with the tissue and applying touch-ups, until the drawing is as smooth as it can be. Here's what the drawing looked like before, and after. Now we're going to blend those lips. For this process, I need a pointy blending tool, such as a blending stump, to get in between wrinkles, and to keep edges looking crisp, instead of blurry. To make a homemade blending stump, like the one I'm using, visit the tutorial down below, or in the video card. I'm going to blend following the lip's contour. If you want to use a tissue instead, fold the tissue into a hard, pointy shape. You don't have to use very much pressure to get the graphite to move around. I'm using the lightest amount of pressure. Sometimes, I'll go over a single area multiple times, just blending it back and forth gently, until it reaches the level of smoothness that I want. As you blend, you'll start picking up a lot of graphite, so remember to carefully adjust your blending pressure to avoid transferring too much graphite onto the page. If you want to clean your blending stump, rub it back and forth along a piece of sandpaper, until it looks like new again. I want to keep this edge very clean, so I'm trying not to blend right along the boundary line, to avoid making it look blurry. To cover a larger surface area, you can use the side of your blending stump, instead of the tip. Again, after you're done blending, you may want to apply touch-ups here and there. If you want to make it pop out of the page even more, you can darken your shadows further, and or brighten up your highlights. To make a highlight brighter, you can swipe it gently with a hard eraser. Make sure you have a nice sharp edge to work with. Or you can use a kneadable eraser, with a gentle swiping or dabbing motion. I'm cleaning the eraser by folding it in on itself, every few swipes. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and found it helpful. If you want to support my channel so I can make more content like this, please share this video with your friends, and subscribe. It really does go a long way. And don't forget to hit the notification bell, so you can be the first to know when a new video comes out. Let me know down below what video you'd like to see next. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.