Kari Lynn M.

Back to Portraits for Beginners Course

Get ready, fellow painter, to start tackling a new part of the face!

So far, we have focused on painting eyes in this course—and that’s because eyes are, typically, the main focus of a portrait. Of course, though, they aren’t the only part of the face we can look at—because we also have the mouth, lips, and teeth.

In this class, you’ll be introduced to the concept of painting mouths, and we will focus mainly on the lips, which can either be glossy or matte in “texture”. We will practice one pair of “glossy” lips, then we will try a pair of “matte” lips. Each pair of lips are different, but there are some key steps we can take to create them in paint; for example, we often paint either the upper or lower lip, add highlights and lowlights to it, and then repeat that same process with the other lip. After that, we can outline the lips and perhaps add some shadows underneath the whole mouth, as we practice in this class.

---

---

Materials Needed

• Paints
  • White
  • Raw Umber
  • Blue or Black
• A mixing palette for acrylic paint
• One paint mixing tool (either a spatula, butter knife, or craft/popsicle stick)
• One small/medium roundhead brush