How to draw the mouth and lips at different angles

The mouth looks like a flat shape from the front, so it often stays flat when the head turns. It wraps around the front of the teeth, which sit on a curve like a section of a cylinder. Draw the lips on that curve and the turned views come out right.

Put it on the curve

Picture a short cylinder standing under the nose, from the base of the nose to the chin. The mouth sits on its front. From the front you see the curve straight on; as the head turns, the far side of the curve goes out of sight first.

The mouth line, where the lips meet, sits about a third of the way from the base of the nose to the chin. The corners of the mouth usually sit roughly under the irises, somewhere between their inner edges and their centers, though wide and narrow mouths vary.

How to draw lips from the front

From the front the mouth is symmetrical. Draw the line where the lips meet first. It's the darkest line in the mouth, and it isn't straight: it dips in the middle and turns down a little at the corners. Then add the upper lip, with its two peaks and the dip between them under the nose, and the lower lip, which is usually fuller and is described more by the shadow under it than by its outline. How to draw lips from the front measures the line, both lips and that shadow on ten heads.

A slight turn and three-quarter view

At the slight three-quarter view the far half of the mouth is a little shorter than the near half. The center line of the face has curved toward the far side, and the middle of the upper lip stays on it.

At the three-quarter view the difference is strong. The far half of the mouth is much shorter and curves away around the teeth, and the far corner is close to the outline of the face. The near half is long, and its corner sits back on the cheek. Keep the middle of the lips on the curved center line of the face, the same line that runs through the nose and chin.

Near profile and profile

By near profile you see mostly the near half of the mouth, and the lips start to form part of the outline of the face. In profile the upper lip usually sits forward of the lower lip, and both usually sit forward of the chin. The corner of the mouth is set well back from the front of the lips. A quick check is a line from the tip of the nose to the front of the chin: on most faces the lips touch it or sit just behind it. How to draw lips from the side measures this, and where the corner goes, on ten heads.

The full-lips head is the one to study here: its lower lip pushes past that line and its upper lip reaches it. That projection is what reads as fullness when the head turns.

Seen from above and below

On a level head the mouth line curves gently with the cylinder. When the head tips back, the corners appear to turn down and the underside of the upper lip shows less; when it tips forward, the corners appear to turn up and the top of the lower lip shows more. The curve of the cylinder is doing this, not the expression, so check the tilt before reading a smile or a frown into the drawing.

Common mouth mistakes

• Drawing the line between the lips as a straight horizontal stroke.
• Keeping both halves of the mouth the same length in a turned view.
• Outlining the lower lip all the way round instead of letting its shadow describe it.
• Putting the corner of the mouth at the front of the face in profile, so the lips look like a flat cutout.

Before adding detail, try the mouth as a short cylinder under the nose at 0, 45 and 90 degrees, and draw the lips on its front each time. The eye guide and the nose guide cover the features above it. What makes a mouth look full, measured against a thinner one, is in how to draw full lips. The full-lips head on this page is Study Pack 08. For the mouth in a smile, in surprise, in sorrow and in anger, see how to draw facial expressions.

This guide is one step in how to draw the head at any angle, which puts all the head guides in order.