Dev Journal: Drawing Mouths is Fun! (Patreon)

    I like mouths. Like, really like mouths. Not because of vore, I don't mean mawshots or anything like that. I'm talking about those squiggly lines at the bottom of characters' faces, the funnier shaped the better. If you slap a 3 onto a girl's face, I will ride for them, I will die for them, I will love them until the end of time. I don't even want to admit to the number of anime I watched or games I played back in the day just because they had a single catgirl. I guess it shouldn't really come as a surprise, then, that my favorite part of drawing a character is their mouth.

    Now, I am very, very much an amateur artist, especially when it comes to this type of art. Even at this point, the vast majority of my art experience is still drawing still lifes in charcoal and pastel. The reason I haven't drawn more anime art is, to be honest it's... really insanely scary, right? I'm sure a lot of those who have tried it themselves would agree. There's so much nuance, so many hidden rules, sometimes it feels like even just being 1% off can ruin your art piece. Far, far worse than that, though, you just care so much more about how your art looks when it's a drawing of your hot anime girl OC that you want everyone to like. As the type who gets discouraged if they can't nail something on the first try, let me tell you that it can be an absolute nightmare. 

    The cool thing is, though, the more you start to learn the rules and the more things click into place, the more you start to realize how beautifully simple it all is and the less you feel that pressure. So much of art doesn't actually come down to talent or physical skill, but instead just knowing the right techniques. That's why I think it would be fun to share some of what I'm learning as I figure it out, to maybe help out other amateur artists and inspire some of those who are like me to see that it's really not so bad, once you get down to it.

    To get things started, lets get a model ready and give her a nice smile. If you don't feel ready for this step, don't be afraid to trace over a koikatsu model or something like that. Tracing is a crutch, but sometimes you need a crutch to start walking. The smile will just be a simple curved line, partway between the nose and chin. If drawing a clean, curved line like this is hard for you, like it is for me, most art programs have stabilizers you can use, too. Since we're in a 3/4 angle, let's have one end go right about under her nose, and the other extend towards her eye. The placement can vary a lot, of course, but this is a good rule of thumb that I've found works most of the time.

   That's cute, but it seems a little off for some reason. Just like the rest of the face, mouths are three-dimensional objects and that's not being properly conveyed right now. Fortunately, the solution is simple. While the shape, size, and placement are correct, what really matters here is line weight. 

    First, let's erase the middle of the mouth and have the line taper off a little, giving the appearance of her lips meeting together. Then, let's thicken the two ends of her mouth ever so slightly to simulate the shadows at the edges of her lips. And... that's it. That's all there is to drawing a regular mouth. Pretty easy, right?

    Next, let's do a wide-open mouth. As basic as possible again, we'll just do a big U with a flat line over it.

    I feel like you see this type of mouth a lot in gag manga. It's very simple and two-dimensional looking as-is, so let's fix that.

    Once again, we can darken the two corners of her mouth and erase part of the line at the bottom to make it look better. To make getting a good taper on the lines you're erasing easier, you can use a soft or low opacity brush. This time, we'll also add a tongue, just a curved line going from the top to the right side of her mouth.

    Then, if you want, you can start to get really wacky with it. All of a sudden, with a few extra lines, she's transformed into a completely different character. Of course, most people probably won't draw mouths like this very often, but I'll go over some of what's going on here, anyway. The fangs are straightforward, just a triangle at the corner of the mouth. The cat mouth is one curved line going about 3/4 of the mouth and down slightly, then another curved line a bit shorter than the first going back up.

   For the bottom teeth, remember that they're a U shape that extends all the way around the mouth. Add a thin line framing the edge of the tongue, then another curved line at the bottom of the mouth. Let's also cover the hole we erased for the lips with a thin line. Then, we'll have the far end of the teeth fade out, both to give the impression of them fading into darkness and since the teeth only go so far into the mouth.

    Finally, let's go for one of the more difficult mouths to get right, a big, wide open, toothy grin.

    That's... hmm. Well, it seems like we did that right, but it also seems... wrong somehow? The reason it looks so odd right now is because, just like before, we're thinking too two-dimensionally. Since the teeth are U shaped, they don't actually go all the way to the edges of the mouth, as they do above. To fix that, let's shade in the corners. Also, since the upper jaw is generally larger, let's try to shade it a bit less.

    That's better, but it's still not as good as it could be. Just like the teeth, the lips curve around the head as well, so to better convey that let's erase some of the black here and bring up the edges a little.

    Hey, that's not bad! ...Still a little creepy, but manic wide-eyed grins tend to be. As a final, optional step, let's also add some definition and shading to the edges of her teeth.

    And there we go! As we've reached the stage of rendering teeth, something I should also say is that there's no right or wrong way to draw. While I want to go for more of a realistic art style, if you have a more stylized art style the earlier examples may work better for you than the 'improved' ones. Even so, it's great to experiment and learn new things!

    This is honestly less of a tutorial and more just me rambling about something that I'm excited about, but I would love it if it did help anyone learn something new. I think it would be fun to do more of these in the future, too, though I can't guarantee that I'll always give the best advice as I'm definitely still learning myself. Thank you for reading this far and for all your support, as always!