The second in my series of "studies", this one focuses on mouths. It's not exactly a tutorial, as you won't see any step-by-step instructions. It's more of an analysis and display of what I have learned so far.
In my quest to achieve a brand new drawing style, I studied many, many works of art by artists who were more capable than I. I always had trouble with mouths, so one day, I sat down at the computer and decided to do some research. I checked regular coloring tutorials, I checked stock photography, and I checked previously made paintings, doodles, and other misc. artwork. What I found really did shock me.
In those paintings where people make everything look so realistic, the mouth often looks very bad before the coloring is applied. Furthermore...it's a very simple line with a little bit more twisting than one might think. My problem was always that I tried to draw every little detail about the mouth. Things ended up looking terrible, and I couldn't figure out why.
Here's my advice: don't draw the lips. Draw the line that parts them. Use color to make them deeper, fuller, thinner, wider...you get the idea. If you check the thinnest, widest lines in the left panel, then relate them with their corresponding colored version, you will see what I mean.
Color can completely change the way that EVERYTHING looks.
Comments
Nicolette Says:
this is really nice! ur an exelent artist! :]
Minty3 Says:
fantastic as always dear Mithy :3
Hyziel Astarte Says:
Hmm, that is very good material D: I must thank you for this, I'm thinking of upping my drawing.
Of course, one smart person did say "Stealing from one author's work is called plagirism. Stealing from many, is called research."
But yes, the lovely thing about being a good artist is that when you research it, the research doesn't come out to be fruitless. And so many good research material out there D:
Writing research = not so easy on the perfectionist trait due to thinking "plagiarism"
Kaoz Order Says:
this is nice hime-chan...
Feadraug Says:
Another interesting and helpful research/tutorial/study about art in general.
And I agree with you in not drawing the lips, just colouring them. That makes it easier and more good-looking when the drawing is finished.
Sprite Killer Says:
Their mouths are way too low. Even their eyes are too low (they are supposed to be in the middle of the head, not lower than that).
Plus, all the mouths are narrow. Hello, people can have wider mouths (and usually they do, those doll-mouths aren't that common in the real world).
Because of those things, I can't really say this is very useful.