so you want to draw a character with sharp teeth? that’s cool! you have a lot of options. like most things, how you draw fearsome teeth can be improved by looking at nature and i’m gonna show you how.

first, a quick lesson in human dentition.

mammals are unique for many reasons, and one of them is because all our teeth are specialized and different. and humans are no exception. here’s what our mouths are like:

on either top or bottom we have

• 4 incisors (blue) for cutting
• 2 canines (green)  for tearing
• 4 premolars (orange) for grinding or slicing
• 4 molars (purple) for grinding
• and 2 extra molars called wisdom teeth (pink), which are usually removed because our mouths are too small to hold them. they usually cause aches and pains as they come in. that’s evolution for you, our mouths shrank faster than our teeth could fall out!

every animal has a different pattern/formula of dentition, but if you can recognize these different types of teeth you can figure it out pretty easily. different animals have different teeth based on what they eat.

dog:

(smaller incisors, large canines, more numerous and sharper premolars, sharper molars)

horse:

(huge incisors, very small canines, very large and numerous flat premolars and molars)

you get the idea. teeth are evolved to fit in the mouth comfortably and chew up food, you already knew that. but what does it mean for characters?

first, lets look at some ways to draw sharp teeth that don’t make much sense…

these are shark teeth. they’re ok, but no mammal has natural teeth like these. mouths with identical teeth are commonly found in fish and reptiles. but it’s ok for fictional characters, just not very visually interesting.

i couldn’t even draw this one from straight on because i couldn’t wrap my head around it. it looks like someone just randomly chose which teeth to make pointy without considering a real human mouth. if you think about it, this character couldn’t close their mouth because there is no space for the big canines to fit! there are way too many incisors, and there wouldn’t be much space left in the mouth for the premolars and molars. also a big hint: the lower canines almost always fit in front of the upper canines.

so lets look at some better ones.

YEAH those look more dangerous. and despite being exaggerated, they’re somewhat realistic. from what we can see, they keep to the human dentition formula with 4 incisors and 2 canines, and you can start to see some sharper premolars too. since the incisors are still pretty flat, these teeth are more similar to maybe a chimpanzee or gorilla, who have the same dentition formula but larger mouths and longer canines.

if you want to go full carnivore, that’s ok too! thats as simple as sharpening the incisors.

SCARY. notice how this one is more similar to the shark teeth above, except with those big ol’ canines. 

so now that you know the dentition formula and how to use it, there’s no one saying that you can’t push it! after all this is fiction, you can have a character with teeth how ever crazy you want.

if you know about dentition formulas and how they work with actual mammals, then you can make any sort of crazy teeth look somewhat believable. GOOD LUCK AND HAPPY TEETH