Learn How to Draw Lips Digitally!

This is your opportunity to learn how to draw lips in you digital art canvas once you have learned the basic planes that construct the mouth.

The main difference here is that you will be using all the digital art tools you have learned thus far to draw lips and mouth. These tools will include the digital paintbrush, dodge and burn tool, and the smudge tool.

As well, you will be switching between brushes that have a hard edge and a soft edge to paint lips. The hard edge will be used for the upper lip due to its crispness while the lower lip will rely on the soft edge.

Through the midst of all this, the smudge tool will be your best friend in this entire exercise.

Let's get started on learning how to draw lips digitally!

1. Getting ready to paint lips

In this step of learning how to draw lips digitally, you will begin by creating a canvas with a nice skin tone. This will be your main background color to paint light on.

Keep track of your digital art tools as much as possible as you will be switching between each individual tool often. As you begin, pick a brush that has a hard edge and begin to paint the planes of the mouth.

Notice the colors carefully. It’s best to set the brush on a low pressure setting so you don’t have deep colors. As well, when you paint with a lighter pressure, you can apply more strokes to the same area to create the plane differences better.

2. Refine the lips with your tools

In this step, you will learn how to draw lips with other tools such as the smudge brush. Remember, the planes are just background place holders and shapes for you to put more details into.

As well, what you do smudge, you need to repaint over with the basic digital paintbrush to even out the colors a bit.

The goal here is to refine the shape of the mouth even more and to decide where the general light source will be. For me, I decided that the light source will be on top.

As such, I have already drawn light around the lips in the skin area. The key here is the bright crisp distinction I have painted that separated the upper lip with the section underneath the nose.

3. Adding light to the lips

To learn how to draw lips with proper lighting, you have to remember that light will be the most abundant when it hits a protruding area. Thus, the light will have the most impact on the lower lip.

Light itself will only hit the upper lip near the crisp seam as the upper lip will slowly angle itself into the mouth. However, the lower lip is exposed because it rounds itself out rather than angle out.

Hence, you will be putting most of the light on the lower lip. To paint the mouth and the lower lips with the proper light, switch between the soft and hard edge paintbrushes.

You may want to incorporate the eyedropper tool to pick out the right colors.

It’s imperative that you use the smudge tool more often on the lower lip than the upper lip due the said curvature of the lower lip. This will create a smooth blend in the lower lip to the rest of the skin color.

4. Color touch ups

The last final step in learning how to draw lips is to use the other digital painting tools available. In other words, all that is left is color experimentation!

For example, the first thing that comes to mind is the doge and burn tools. Why? Well, when everything is said and done, you may want to further enhance the details.

Use the dodge tool to bring out more light and the burn tool to darken the shadows if necessary.

Or, if you want, use the de-saturation options to dull the overall colors of the lips. This should give it a more natural color versus a lip that suggests lipstick already applied.

There are endless possibilities that can be done in 2d digital art as you continue to finish off learning how to draw lips.

As long as you stay true to the fundamental foundations of painting light and finding basic shapes, it should help you out with whatever you are painting in your digital canvas.

Please continue to stay motivated and to practice what you have learned!

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