Most people fail at drawing lips because they treat the mouth like an island. You see it all the time in beginner sketches—a pair of floating sausages stuck onto the bottom of a face with no connection to the jaw, the cheeks, or the nose. It's frustrating. You spend an hour shading the perfect cupid's bow only to realize the whole thing looks like a weirdly realistic sticker rather than a part of a living human being. Learning how to draw mouths is actually less about the lips themselves and more about the fleshy, muscular landscape surrounding them.
If you look at the work of master draftsmen like Andrew Loomis, you'll notice they rarely draw a hard outline around the lips. Instead, they focus on the "muzzle" of the face. That’s the area that pushes forward from the skull, housing the teeth and providing the structural foundation for everything else. Without that underlying volume, your drawings will always feel flat.
Honestly, the mouth is probably the most expressive part of the face after the eyes. It doesn't just sit there. It stretches, compresses, and wraps around the cylinder of the teeth. If you aren't thinking about the teeth underneath, you're already losing the battle.
The Anatomy Most People Ignore
We need to talk about the orbicularis oris. It’s a complex circle of muscle that surrounds the mouth. Think of it like a drawstring bag. When it tightens, the lips pucker. When it relaxes, they widen. This muscle is what creates those subtle fleshy mounds at the corners of the mouth, often called the nodes.
If you forget the nodes, the mouth looks like a slit cut into a piece of paper.
When you're figuring out how to draw mouths, you have to visualize the five basic "pads" of flesh that make up the lips. The upper lip has three: a central tubercle (that little dip in the middle) and two flanking wings. The bottom lip has two large, pillowy masses.
Don't draw these as flat shapes.
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They are volumes.
The top lip usually tilts downward, catching less light and appearing darker. The bottom lip usually tilts upward, acting like a shelf that catches the overhead light. This is why, in 90% of lighting scenarios, the top lip is a shadow tone and the bottom lip has a bright highlight. If you color them both the same shade of pink or red, you’ve killed the 3D effect instantly.
Perspective and the Curse of the Symmetry
Stop drawing symmetrical mouths. Nobody has a perfectly symmetrical face, and even if they did, the moment they turn their head even three degrees, that symmetry vanishes.
This is where the "center line" becomes your best friend.
When a head turns into a three-quarter view, the half of the mouth further away from the viewer undergoes foreshortening. It gets narrower. The philtrum—that little groove between the nose and the lip—shifts too. If you keep the philtrum dead center while the head is turned, the mouth will look like it’s sliding off the side of the person’s face. It's a common mistake that even intermediate artists make when they get too focused on the "pretty" parts of the drawing and forget the perspective.
Consider the "M" and "W" approach. Some teachers suggest the top of the mouth follows a wide "M" shape (the Cupid's bow) and the bottom follows a "W" or a simple curve. This is okay for a quick sketch, but for realism, look for the "step." The upper lip usually overlaps the bottom lip slightly at the corners. There is a depth there that a single line can't capture.
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Light, Shadow, and the Wetness Factor
Lips aren't matte. Well, unless someone is wearing heavy lipstick, but even then, there's a texture.
The skin on the lips is much thinner than the skin on the rest of the face. This allows the blood vessels underneath to show through, which is why they have a different color. But more importantly for artists, the lips are moist. This creates "specular highlights"—those tiny, sharp white pips of light that tell the viewer's brain "this is a living, breathing person."
Don't overdo the cracks.
New artists often try to draw every single vertical wrinkle on the lips. This usually ends up looking like the person has parched, cracked skin or, worse, like you’ve drawn a bunch of stitches. Instead of drawing lines, suggest the texture using "lost and found" edges.
Use a kneaded eraser to tap out some highlights on the fleshy parts of the lower lip. Let the edges of the mouth blur into the skin of the cheeks. In real life, there isn't a black line surrounding your lips. It's just a transition of color and value. If you can master the soft edge where the lip meets the chin, your work will jump levels overnight.
The Teeth Trap
Drawing teeth is a nightmare for most. The instinct is to draw every individual tooth with a dark line between them. Please, don't do this. Unless you want your character to look like they have a mouth full of piano keys or corn kernels, you need to simplify.
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Teeth should be treated as a single white-ish mass.
The "lines" between teeth are actually very subtle, shallow grooves. Usually, you only need to hint at the gaps near the bottom edges or where the light hits the gums. Most of the time, the corners of the mouth are in deep shadow, meaning the back teeth are barely visible. If you draw the back molars with the same clarity as the front incisors, the mouth will look terrifyingly wide.
Expressions Change Everything
A smile isn't just the corners of the mouth moving up.
When you smile, the cheeks are pushed upward. This creates those "smile lines" (nasolabial folds) and often makes the eyes crinkle. If you change the mouth without changing the rest of the face, the expression will feel "uncanny" or fake. It’s like those corporate headshots where the person is smiling with their mouth but their eyes look like they’re screaming for help.
When someone is angry, the lips often thin out as they press against the teeth. When someone is surprised, the mouth drops, but the skin around the mouth stretches tight. Understanding how to draw mouths in motion requires you to look at the tension points. Where is the skin pulling? Where is it bunching up?
Common Mistakes to Audit in Your Work
- The Flat Bottom Lip: Remember it’s a shelf. It should have thickness and a top plane that catches light.
- The Sharp Outline: Avoid the "coloring book" look. Use shadows to define the shape, not hard perimeter lines.
- Ignoring the Philtrum: This little valley connects the mouth to the nose. Without it, the mouth feels disconnected.
- Floating Corners: The corners of the mouth always tuck into the cheek. There's a little "pocket" there. Shade it.
- Misaligned Center: Ensure the split between the lips aligns with the center of the nose and the chin, accounting for perspective.
Practical Steps to Improve Today
Grab a mirror. Seriously. Most of the best figurative artists, from Norman Rockwell to modern concept artists, spent half their time making weird faces in a mirror.
- Sketch the Skull First: Draw the cylindrical shape of the teeth before you put the lips on top. It helps you understand how the lips curve around the face.
- Focus on the Shadow Shape: Instead of drawing "lips," try to draw only the shadow cast by the upper lip and the shadow tucked under the lower lip. You’ll be surprised how much it looks like a mouth without any "lines" at all.
- Vary Your Pressure: Use a soft pencil (like a 4B or 6B) for the deep corners and the center line where the lips meet. Use a harder pencil or a light touch for the outer edges.
- Study the "Muzzle": Look at how the skin around the mouth moves when you say "Ooo" versus "Eee."
- Limit the Highlights: One or two sharp highlights on the lower lip are enough. Too many and it looks like the person just ate something incredibly greasy.
Drawing is 10% hand movement and 90% observation. If you stop drawing what you think a mouth looks like and start drawing the actual shapes of light and shadow you see, the "sticker" effect will disappear. It takes practice, and honestly, your first twenty tries might look a bit wonky. That’s fine. Just keep the anatomy in mind and remember that the mouth is a volume, not a flat symbol on a page.
Focus on the way the lips wrap around the teeth. Master the soft transitions at the corners. Once you stop treating the mouth as an isolated feature, your portraits will start to feel like actual people.