can change the actual shape of the eye, but the entire shape and size of a mouth can be altered at a moment's notice by the clever use of lip rouge and powder. In drawing, however, the reverse. On the page of eyes there is a tremendous difference between Nos. i, 2, 5, 6, 8. It has been possible to achieve no contrasts half so striking on the page devoted to lips, of which the very wildest (No. 5) is not far removed from life.
The lips and noses correspond, for the most part, in treatment if not always in angle and position, with the eyes bearing the same numbers.
No. 1 is a simple treatment of a beautiful, slightly smiling mouth. To indicate a smile, it is unnecessary to raise the corners of the mouth more than this. Never let it become a grin. Unless there is some particular object in doing so it is inadvisable to make the upper line of the top lip any more sharply pointed than this.- To accentuate the undulating curves into points gives an artificial look to the whole face. Unless the upper and lower lip are expressed by the same tone, or you want some special effect of reflected light, the upper lip should be darker than the lower. Even so, it should not be black. The darkest tone in a face is the pupil of the eye and next to that the brows, and even these need not be black ; but, except sometimes in a line drawing, lips should never be black.
No. 2 is the stippled treatment again. Hairdressers often favour a smiling mouth, and here, but nowhere else unless it be an advertisement for dentifrice, are the teeth shown as anything but an unbroken line of white. It is really an exaggeration to call this treatment life-like ; it is less so than Nos. 8, 11 or 12.. The ideal here, surely, is the waxwork, which is itself an imitation of life ; and the double remove from actuality has brought, not distortion nor a true simplification, but a curious smoothing out of wrinkles and a slurring of sharp edges. This is the only treatment where the wing of the nostril is shown, the cavity alone being sufficient as a rule.
No. 3 is a simpler rendering than No. 1, but it also shows that a mouth that is not actually disagreeable tends to express a smile. No. 1 is nearly a front view, but this is a true three-quarter view. The upper and lower lips are the same tone and you need never divide them with a line when this is so. A subdued high-light on the lower lip always gives a very fresh look to the mouth. Owing to the head being more averted than No. 1, we see nothing of the further nostril, not even the slight indication of No. 1, just the faintest stroke to show the tip of the nose. A companion of Nos. 1 and 3 leads you to suppose, and rightly, that there is no rule as to whether the cavity (the nose being in profile) shall be suggested by a stroke with the little hook at the front or at the back. In actual fact there should be a little curve at both ends, as in No. 6, but this looks too like a little piece of bent wire, and so a mark like a horizontal comma is enough.
No. 4, a pen and ink treatment, is also an example of rather a disagreeable
mouth. More, perhaps, than that it is the rather set mouth of the older woman. If a pleasanter mouth were wanted, No. i could easily be expressed in line. You can see from this that, to make a mouth rather forbidding, it is not enough to make it droop, or Nos. 10 and 12a would be disagreeable. What gives the effect here is the equal thickness of upper and lower lip and, still more, the failure to continue the dividing line right to the corner of the mouth, thus giving it a pursed look.
No. 5 is the most unrealistic mouth on this page, but in certain conditions a dot, a circle, or just a dash can stand for a mouth provided their relationship to other features implies this. But even out of its context No. 5 is still recognisable. The nose is merely a figure 7, turned upside down and reversed, but it fits perfectly into place with regard to the mouth and calls for no further elaboration. A smiling expression is given to this mouth, and can be given to others, not by turning it up at the corners, but by tilting the angle of the whole mouth.
No. 6 illustrates three versions of the child's mouth, (a) is a three-quarter view smiling, diffidence being implied by the recession of the lower lip. (b) is an unsmiling mouth, perhaps puzzled, perhaps obstinate, this distinction depending upon the eye. It well shows what must always be remembered about children's features, that they should be rounded and under-modelled. Anything that is in the least sinuous or shapely is wrong, (c) is the nose and mouth in animated profile. A child's nose is usually drawn as being rather flat to the face, although in nature it is very often rather peaky. The nostril is sometimes a dot, sometimes a circle, sometimes, as here, a two-ended hook, and often left out altogether. This mouth is more like a boy's than a girl's because of the rather protruding lower lip. Note how the junction between the upper and lower lip is rounded, in contrast to the pointed effect below (No. 9).
No. 7 is the mouth and nose of the hard-bitten woman, or man. Out of its context, and placed at a random angle, this mouth would mean nothing, but here it expresses a tight-lipped, half-humorous quality. The nose, without being too much defined, is obviously a prominent one, with a sharp bridge.
No. 8 is the wholly agreeable mouth that goes with the eye (No. 8) and counteracts its rather agonised expression (though smaller in scale, it is the same position and angle). Nos. 8, 11 and 12 are done in the direct, rather rough, style that does not require any initial outline, except perhaps the faintest pencil. The mouth can be indicated all in one tone, with a touch here and there, before it is quite dry, of a darker tone. In this mouth, and 11a, the failure to take the tone all over the lower lip (i.e., the little piece of white left under one corner of the upper lip) indicates the roundness and dampness of the lower lip and also that the lipstick, while still quite thick at the edges of the lips, has become rubbed or licked off where the lower lip turns over inside the mouth. This kind of thing so
often happens in real life and its reproduction in a drawing is the best kind of realism, being the result of observation rather than of laborious modelling.
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