How to Carve Lips?

For some woodcarvers who make human sculptures and faces, the mouth part becomes quite a challenge. However, it is one of the most beautiful parts of a woman’s face. So, let’s go step by step exploring how you can easily carve on wooden sculpture beautiful feminine lips.  

Step 1. Smoothen the rounded area in the face of your sculpture where the lips are going to appear, prepare the place for the lips. Make the area look like a nice soft skin. Then draw the lips. Women’s upper lip is slightly bigger than the lower lip and is pointed. You have to outline the contour of the lips and the line between the lips.  

Step 2. First, work on the line between the lips and the area up and down from it. Deepen the lips – the closer to the line between the lips, the deeper the point should be, while the contour of the lips remains untouched. You can do it using a stop cut. Make a stop cut along the line between the lips and take the material out cutting from the contour to this middle line.  

Step 3. When the inside relief is done, go to the area outside the lips. The part of the material should be taken out there also. As a result, the outer contour of the lips will be the highest line, and the surrounding area inside and outside the contour will go deeper into the wood layers. So, take a round gouge and carve a groove along the contour line of the lips. Use a detail knife to cut the chips free. As your outline must show, the upper lip contour is pointed, while the lower lip contour is rounded.  

Step 4. With the same gouge, carve the groove that goes from the upper lip to the nose. It doesn’t have to be too deep, it just has to be present.  

Step 5. Add more shape to the lip relief using a skew chisel and a carving knife. Make lips rounded and pouty, add the details you want to be there.  

Step 6. The line between the lips will look natural when it’s deep. So, in the end, work on this line. Using a stop cut, take out with a knife a narrow chip little by little from in between the lips until the actual depth of the line between the upper and lower lips becomes unclear. This will create a realistic image of the mouth.  

Hope, this will help you create a mouth part of the face you are doing and give it a realistic and beautiful appearance. You can find many wood carving tool kits for your projects.