VIDEO TUTORIAL: Painting Sparkly Lips (Patreon)

In this intermediate to advanced tutorial I will show you how you can create realistic looking, sparkly lips. I've added a short breakdown of all the steps. I have added the reference image (here's the Pinterest link: https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/258042253636442479/), color palette and brush set with all the brushes that were used. You can download the working file through this link, in case you want to take a closer look: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FcTSNDkr0lImoxKHKTTioEoK2p1zLU8h/view?usp=sharing

Have fun painting sparkly lips!

Canvas size: 3000 x 4000

The Steps

0:00 - 6:00 : The first step in the process is creating a sketch, we'll do this by using the chalk pencil. Of course you can use any sketching brush you like.

6:00 - 14:00 : Next we'll drop in the base colors of the lips on a layer below the sketch layer. Throughout the painting process I'll be painting on just this layer. I'm using the Basic Flo brush to drop in the base colors first. You don't have to get the perfect colors right away, just try to drop in something that is close. Like warm pinks for the lips, a darker tone for the inside and a gray for the teeth.

14:00 - 18:00 : Once you have the base colors, you can use the smudge tool set to the Standard Blender to soften all of the transitions a bit.

18:00 - 25:00 : Using the Darken Line brush, I like to clean up some edges. For instance, the edge between the inside of the mouth and the lips is pretty crisp. I use the Darken Line brush to darken the inside of the mouth. You can pick up local colors when using this brush.

25:00 - 31:00 : After refining the edges, I switch back to the Basic Flo brush to add some subtle texture to the lips, the crease you see on the lips. Make sure to think about the volume of the lips here and adjust the curves of the creases to it.

31:00 - 36:00 : Before adding sparkles to the lips, I refined everything a little bit more. You can touch up the edges, use the Multiply brush to work on some shadow areas and the Overlay brush to spice up the colors.

36:00 - 39:00 : Using the Makeup Brushes, I added sparkles and glitters to the lips. But before I did that, I duplicated the entire layer. That way you can add sparkles all over and then add a layer mask to the layer. Fill the layer mask with black and then use a brush set to white to paint the sparkles back in.

39:00 - 45:00 : With the Wet Subtle Gloss and Shiny GlossLight I added glossy highlights to the lips. The Wet Subtle Gloss brush is a wet brush that easily blends when you don't lift your pen. It's perfect for more transparent, subtle glossy areas.

45:00 - 52:00 : At this stage I used the Shiny Sparkle brush on a separate layer to add some really sparkly highlights. And going back to the lip layer, I used the Lightpen to add even more sparkles to the lips by hand. You can really go all out here 😊

52:00 - 55:00 : Finally, if you need to tweak some more things, you could use the Darken Line brush for instance, set to a local color to work on some subtle crease some more. In the end I merged the layers and went to Gaussian Blur set to Pencil. Using a soft brush you can add some blur to the corners of the mouth, giving it some more depth.

BACK TO THE OVERVIEW