To view the video on YouTube click here Drawing realistic lips/teeth
I finally have my second video up! I know this is going a bit slow but doing this with a web cam is a little rough. My computer can't handle a continuous feed so I have to do these drawings in short segments and join them together afterwards. Also the video is very contrasty so the image above was added at the end to show how it actually looks.
Enough of that here's the details for the drawing. This is a pencil drawing of a pair of lips and teeth. I have made a speed drawing which I feel is much more interesting to watch. Drawing lips/teeth is like drawing anything else. You have to convey shape and texture with nothing but black,white and shades of gray. Taking a flat piece of paper and drawing something that looks lifelike is not as difficult as some might think. You just have to draw from light to dark (tonal values) in a way that makes your image look like it has shape and not just flat.
On a pair of lips this shading will start from the darkest area which is the inside of the mouth and work outwards from there. This shading will generally need to be pretty subtle for a realistic effect. You will need to practice to get the feel of how much contrast you can use before it starts looking unreal. The only area of lips that should be white or the lightest part is the highlight. This will vary from person to person with the whitest highlights giving the illusion of wet lips. Keep this in mind when doing a male portrait because if you have very white highlights it generally won't look very realistic but on a woman it can be much more appropriate.
Like skin lips have much more texture than most people think. In fact lips when viewed close up are not smooth at all! How much of this texture you draw will depend on the size of the drawing and how much patients you have. The vertical lines in lips should at a minimum be included for a realistic look. The tendency is to draw these lines much darker than they really are to try and make the shape stand out. Be careful of this because the darker you make these the rougher and less realistic your lips will be. In reality they aren't very deep so the shadow created is very slight. They will probably need to be drawn slightly darker than they are in reality in order for them to noticeable in a black and white drawing.
Teeth, like the "white's" of eyes, aren't really white at all. If you left them white they would look very awkward and unreal without any shape at all. Again the only part that should actually be white is the highlights on them. They must be drawn so they have shape and look very smooth. The line between teeth should be very dark and quickly going from that to the highlights. The greater the contrast here the better the illusion of shape will be. Be careful with how dark you go as the viewer thinks teeth are actually white and if they are drawn too dark they will just look stained. They should be one of the lightest areas of a portrait so they will look white but will in reality contain a wide tonal range to give them the shape that can be very realistic. Also this is an area where tortillion's work very well to smooth out the texture of the teeth you draw. Be careful when you use a tortillion because they will pick up graphite from the darkest areas and spread it out to the lighter areas. When using any blending techniques start from the lightest areas and work into the dark tones. Never blend in the highlight areas because they will become darker when you do. You want highlights to be as white as possible (this will of course depend on the paper you use). No matter how white your paper is when your drawing is finished highlights will appear white next to all the darker areas.
I will leave it there for now, please ask questions on any specific areas of how to make your drawing look more realistic.
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