How to draw different lip shapes

Most lip shape names point at one measurable thing. Full and thin lips are about height, wide and narrow mouths about width, bottom-heavy and top-heavy lips about which lip is taller, downturned and upturned about the corners, and protruding lips about how far forward they sit in profile. This guide measures each on ten drawn heads, and the last section lists the shapes they don't show.

The heads are the ten bald heads in the free head rotation reference, front and profile pencil plates. The numbers come from our measurements for lips from the front, lips from the side and face width proportions. The measurements are approximate, especially at the corners. These are one artist's drawings with closed, neutral mouths, so the numbers show the range of these ten, not of real faces.

Start from one mouth

Take the middle of each measure: a mouth about nine tenths as wide as the distance between the iris centers, lips that take about a fifth of the space from the nose to the chin, an upper lip about three quarters as tall as the lower, corners just below the middle of the line, and a shallow bow. The square-jaw head sits within the read error of the middle on all of them, and lips from the front builds it step by step. Draw that first, then move one thing.

Full and thin lips

Measure the lips from the peaks of the upper lip to the top of the shadow under the lower lip, against the space from the nose to the chin. The heads fall into two groups:

• Thin, about a fifth to just under a quarter: hard-plane, gaunt-planes, heavy-jaw, deep-folds, soft-planes, square-jaw and heavy-brow.
• Full, just under a third to about a third: minimal, full-lips and high-cheekbones.

The gap between the two groups is several times the read error. For the mouth's width, the three full mouths also have the widest shadows under the lower lip, at every cut-off we measured.

Which lip makes a mouth full

The full heads don't get there the same way.

• Both lips. On the full-lips and high-cheekbones heads the upper lip at the peaks takes a little over an eighth of the space from the nose to the chin, against a tenth or less on the seven thin heads. Their lower lips take about a sixth, against a tenth to about an eighth.
• Mostly the lower lip. The minimal head's lower lip takes a fifth of the space from the nose to the chin and is the tallest of the ten, about a quarter taller than the next. Its upper lip at the peaks is within the thin heads' range, though taller than most of theirs.

So there are two ways to fill out a thin mouth: make the lower lip much taller and the upper a little, or raise both. These come from comparing different heads, not from editing one.

Protruding lips

In profile, lay a line from the tip of the nose to the front of the chin. The full-lips lower lip crosses it, by a twentieth of the mouth's width, and the minimal and high-cheekbones lower lips sit on it; the other seven stay behind it. The full-lips upper lip touches the line and the minimal one sits behind it like the thin heads', so the minimal mouth leads with its lower lip from the side too. The line moves with the chin, so read it with the heights from the front. Lips from the side has the full set.

Wide and narrow mouths

Measure the mouth from corner to corner against the distance between the iris centers: from just over three quarters to a little under the full distance, about seven eighths on a typical head.

• Narrow, just over three quarters: the minimal and full-lips heads. Their corners sit a little inside the inner edges of the irises; on the other eight the corners sit under the irises. The next mouth, the square-jaw head's, reaches almost seven eighths of the distance between the iris centers.
• The rest, a little under to a little over nine tenths: too close to rank. The gaunt-planes, heavy-jaw and heavy-brow mouths are the widest, a little over nine tenths.

The minimal mouth is also the shortest on the plates. The full-lips mouth is narrow partly because it's short and partly because its eyes are set wide: its iris centers are the furthest apart of the ten, almost tied with the high-cheekbones head and further apart than on any of the others.

Two of the three full mouths are the two narrowest, and the third, high-cheekbones, is a typical seven eighths of the distance between the iris centers. So on these heads a full mouth isn't a wide one. How to draw full lips compares the full-lips and square-jaw tonal plates against the space from the nose to the chin and finds the two mouths the same width; against the eyes, the full-lips mouth is the narrower.

To draw either, drop lines from the iris centers before you place the corners: a little inside them for a typical mouth, inside the irises' inner edges for a narrow one.

Bottom-heavy and top-heavy lips

On all ten heads the lower lip is the taller one, measured against the upper lip at the peaks, so all ten are bottom-heavy. The upper lip is about three quarters as tall as the lower on a typical head. These ratios carry about a tenth either way: the minimal head is lowest at a little over half, the heavy-brow and soft-planes heads next at a little over three fifths, and the rest run from just under three quarters to about four fifths.

To draw a top-heavy mouth, with the upper lip as tall as the lower or taller, raise the bow, move the shadow under the lower lip up, and check it against a photo.

Downturned and upturned corners

No corner sits above the middle of the mouth line. On six heads each corner sits only slightly below, near the read error, so the line looks almost level. On the gaunt-planes head the corners drop further, on the heavy-jaw and minimal heads further still, and on the hard-plane head furthest, though that front is seen slightly from below, which turns the corners down further.

So a downturned mouth here is the minimal or heavy-jaw one, with a drop of about a tenth of the mouth's width. Their profiles are drawn a little chin-up, like the hard-plane one, so part of that drop may be the view too; we haven't measured that from the front. Lifted corners start a smile, as facial expressions shows.

The cupid's bow

The two peaks of the upper lip are about a fifth of the mouth's width apart, though a rounded peak is hard to place precisely. The dip between them is shallow, a notch rather than a V. The philtrum and cupid's bow places the peaks.

Shapes these plates don't show

• A top-heavy mouth, upturned corners, or a deep or flat bow.
• Heart-shaped and round lips. We measured heights, widths and the mouth line, not the outline of either lip.
• Open, smiling or uneven mouths.

For these, start from the nearest head here and check against a photo.

Common mistakes

• Making lips full by widening the mouth. Here full mouths are taller, and two of the three are the narrowest.
• Turning the corners up on a resting face; none of these ten does.

A short exercise

Open the square-jaw head from the front and draw its mouth: a fifth of the space from the nose to the chin, the corners under the irises. Draw it twice more. In the second, keep the upper lip and make the lower about one and a half times as tall, as on the minimal head. In the third, raise both lips until they take a third of that space, as on the full-lips head. Pull the corners of either full mouth inside the irises' inner edges and compare all three with the plates.

What these numbers don't cover

We read the lower lip to the top of the shadow under it, not to a drawn outline. The mouth and lips at different angles turns the shape between the two views.

The heavy-brow, square-jaw and full-lips heads are Study Packs 10, 07 and 08, in Volume 2, and the minimal head is Study Pack 04, in Volume 1.

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