Welcome to a new tutorial. I apologize for my absence in the past period due to being busy with many things, but I am back with many new lessons that will help you develop your skills in drawing anime and manga.
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Today's tutorial focuses on drawing anime mouths and lips in a distinctive Japanese style, using an easy and smooth method that gives you professional results without any complications. Many of you find it difficult to draw mouths in harmony with the rest of the facial features, so today I will present you with simple steps that will enable you to draw mouths and lips in a beautiful anime style in all your drawings.
First step
We begin by sketching the initial outline of the mouth, which will be a horizontal rectangle with a line down the center. This central line will help you determine the position of the lips and serve as a guide for dividing the mouth evenly throughout the drawing. Don't worry about high precision at this stage; the goal is simply to determine the size of the smile and the overall width of the mouth.
Step two
In the second step, draw a curved line inside the rectangle, with the bottom line representing the lower lip and the top line representing the upper lip. Make sure the curves look natural and subtle, as these lines will help you achieve the correct balance between the two sides of the anime mouth while drawing.
Step three
In the third step, we add teeth with simple lines inside the mouth, and draw the tongue at the bottom as a simple curved line to show its presence when the mouth is open. Try not to overdo the details here, as anime drawing relies on simplicity, especially since we are still in the sketching stage.
Step four
In step four, we begin inking the lines using a thin black pen or the inking tool in the digital drawing program, focusing on defining the mouth features and lip lines more accurately, and gently removing the guide lines after finishing the inking.
Step five
In the fifth step, we begin the coloring stage, where we color the lips with a pink or skin tone color, and color the inside of the mouth with a dark or dark red color to add shading. A simple highlight can be added using white to show the shine on the lips.
A closer look
Here we see how the rectangle and the guide lines helped us determine the size of the mouth and the length of the lips as required, a technique I recommend you use every time you draw the mouth of a new anime character.
Drawing anime mouths in multiple styles
Having learned the basic method, we will now move on to drawing multiple shapes of the anime mouth to express different states of the character such as joy, anger, surprise, or whispering.
First step
Using the same method as before, we quickly draw a preliminary sketch to determine the position of the mouth we wish to draw; it may be an open mouth to express surprise or a smiling mouth to express happiness.
Step two
After defining the shape, we gently ink the lines while maintaining fluidity, clearly defining the lips and the inside of the mouth.
Step three
After inking, we get multiple mouth shapes, each shape showing different emotions of the character, until we get the desired variety.
Step four
We begin coloring by using skin tones for the lips, adding darker colors to the inside of the mouth and outlining the teeth in white, placing shadows in appropriate places to highlight the dimensions.
In the shading stage, we use the brush to add color gradients to the lips, and we add shine using white to highlight the details. This gives the anime mouth drawing greater beauty and professionalism.
It is important to note that drawing the mouth in the anime world does not require complexity or many details, but rather depends on simple and curved lines, which express emotions in the simplest ways, and this is what makes learning to draw an anime mouth easy.
Learn how to draw an anime face step by step - face drawing lesson
Note that an open mouth in anime is usually triangular when expressing surprise or fear, while a closed, smiling mouth is drawn as a simple upward curved line, and a sad mouth as a downward curved line.
And that concludes the lesson on drawing anime mouths. These were the easy yet challenging steps. Practice them every day, and within two weeks, I guarantee you won't find drawing anime mouths difficult at all. Thank you for following the lesson, and I'll see you soon, God willing.
