Lemma Soft Forums

When drawing in the anime style, do you color the female characters' lips? Do you have any rules of thumb to decide if it's appropriate to color lips?

I color the lips of the most feminine female characters, and if their age is over 13 (above loli), or the character is more sexy than cute, or the character is naked.

I tend to color the lips of my female charaters lightly, the only cases when I don't are when:
-The character isn't suppose to look cute or beautiful (if she's attacking with a sword, ...), because she's less feminine than anothe rthing (dangerous, ...)
- The character has his mouth really open (when laughing, shouting) because I can't.
But I usually put a little light or something ^^
When using alcohol based markers, then I don't mind coloring the lips a lot because I really like the contrast ^^ For instance:

(a fanart of Flower Memories, a manga ^^)
So it depends on the way I color (Photoshop or markers),on the personnality of the character and on what I am able to do ^^

I never thought about the age of the character before coloring because I can't draw little girls, but I'll keep what you said in mind ^^

I shade all lips, regardless of the character age or type or gender; I think it's kind of silly when people don't shade the top lip, as if it isn't there or something. Whether I add any pink tones though, depends on the character.

With all female characters I like to at least add a pinkish hue that is the same as their cheeks (this is if they aren't supposed to be wearing lipstick or something). With younger characters, more pink or coral tone (depending on the skin colour) I feel works nicer. With older ladies, darker reddish hues, almost into the browns tends to work (though with super old ladies a more skin-toned lip is better imo).

I have a thing for pretty full looking lips, so I don't like leaving them without at least a bit of colour and shine... more often than not I find the lip colours in anime pictures leave the characters with super thin looking lips, which makes me a little sad ^^;

I like colored lips, but I also think it depends of the style you're using for your drawings. Simplest anime drawings don't use even the shading, while elaborate anime CGs have full colored and detailed lips. Also, you need a good lineart to color and define lips very well, usually the lips' 3dness, shading and details are first defined when you sketch your picture. At this stage, you can try lips shading with pencil to have a general idea about how to color later.
If you intend to use a simple style I think a little shading or lipgloss tone would be enough.

For my drawings, I like the bishonen elaborated style I found in some doujinshi or bishie anime CG, so I use to shade and color lips even for male characters ↓