Drawing is much more than just putting pencil to paper and sketching what’s in front of you.  Professional artists will tell you that it’s a medium for exploring human emotions and evoking real-life feelings in a 2D medium. So, you can understand the challenge that artists face and realize now why famous paintings sell for millions. If you’re a budding artist looking to make a name in the world of art, it would be best to read a few books about drawing concepts and techniques. To help you, we have narrowed down the 50 best drawing books for beginners that explore various ways of bringing art forms to life.

Best Drawing Books For Beginners

Here’s the list of the 50 best drawing books for beginners, a comprehensive collection that will inspire and guide you on your artistic journey.

1. Keys To Drawing – Best for Beginners

To become proficient in different drawing techniques, it’s important to practice, and that’s where Bert Dodson’s book comes in handy. It focuses on simple techniques so that you can create your own style. All the techniques are easy to follow and suitable for new artists to help them apply clean strokes by controlling the movement of their hands and elbows. You’ll find that the realistic drawing exercises have been divided into several lessons for quick understanding.

2. Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain – Best for Realistic Drawing

This book acts as a portal to the world of professional artists, especially for budding painters who need to practice realistic drawing exercises. Published in 1979, it’s a bestseller in the USA and has been translated into several languages. The author, Betty Edwards, taught at California State University and has provided essential tips and tricks to be a successful painter. There’s even a section about using the left and right sides of the brain to good effect.

3. Drawing For The Absolute Beginner – Best for Easy Learning

Every famous artist was once a beginner, but you will have a slight advantage because they didn’t have the luxury of reading this book. Written by Mary and Mark Willenbrik, it will help improve your drawing skills in short, effective strokes. All the methods in this book are pretty straightforward, while the narrative tone is simple. We came across several useful tips that will help you grasp the basic art forms and styles with ease.

4. Drawing For The Absolute And Utter Beginner – Best for Nature & Portrait Drawing

Novice artists who one day aspire to bring various art forms to life will love this book by Claire Watson Garcia. You can learn to draw nature, people, still life, objects, textures, and basic shapes. The best part is that it has a separate section on charcoal shading and graphite pencil sketches for drawing realistic portraits.

5. Light For Visual Artists – Best for Understanding Light & Shadow

To make your drawings stand out, it’s essential to understand the interplay between light and shadow. We recommend studying the techniques in this book by Richard Yot, but don’t worry because it’s not difficult to understand. The book isn’t filled with complicated terminology despite talking about technical concepts. It’s perfect for creating detailed illustrations in visual art and proves to be a valuable resource for animators, photographers, novice artists, and professional painters.

6. Perspective Made Easy

At times, the best way to leave your mark as a painter is to look at things from a different perspective. And to explore new drawing techniques, you can read this book about perspective drawing, which contains more than 250 line drawings related to the vanishing point and horizon. Ernest R. Norlingod discusses the importance of seeing things at eye level to create shadows, shapes, objects, and figures to build your foundation as a painter.

7. The Natural Way To Draw

Another bestseller for art study is this book about drawing objects and figures by taking inspiration from real life. If you’re committed to gathering practical knowledge, then follow the exercises carefully crafted by the author, Kimon Nicolaides, from his experiences. Having learned from stalwarts like Sloan, Bridgman, and Miller, he explores his passion for teaching art in this detailed book. We found that it’s ideal for beginners and slightly advanced painters.

8. Vilppu Drawing Manual

As far as figure drawing books go, the Vilppu Drawing Manual is one of the best and helps beginners make life drawings with ease. The author was employed at Disney for 15 years and passed on his knowledge by writing this comprehensive art course. We found that the three main topics in this book are: gesture drawing, form construction, and hand action.

9. Figure Drawing For All It’s Worth

As professional painters will tell you, there’s no need to look far for inspiration because humans are some of the most interesting subjects. If you want to draw a life-like human figure, we recommend Andrew Loomis’ book to make this seemingly difficult task easy. He details the intermediary steps involved in the process so that you can draw figures by maintaining the correct proportions of different body parts. Even though the methods described might appear outdated, they are extremely useful.

10. Traveling With Your Sketchbook

Serious art teachers will always encourage you to travel because there’s so much to see and paint. But don’t forget to carry this sketchbook to capture the emotions of different places and their people. Instead of taking photos, this old-school technique of recording memories will help you develop human connections. Thanks to its unique combination of lessons, the book discusses the techniques for painting nature, the environment, and urban scenes.

11. How To Draw What You See

Suppose you chance upon an interesting scene while on a beach and want to paint it, but don’t know how? It so happens that artists often fail to replicate the objects in front of them, so this book helps make that easier. We believe it’s ideal for sketching objects in still life and explains how to add detail with each stroke.

12. A Foundation Course In Drawing

This book written by Terry Rosenberg and Peter Stanyer will be a great reference material for serious art students. It extensively discusses drawing skills involving space, shape, light, and texture.  Several fun exercises keep you engaged and prove most suitable for artists who have some proficiency. You’ll especially love topics covering landscape, movement of figures, abstract subjects, and still life.

13. Framed Ink

If you’re a budding storyteller, this book will hold great value for your career. It’s one of the rare books for graphic novelists who wish to engage with the audience through their illustrations. And, thanks to Marcos Mateu-Mestre, a comic artist himself, you’ll get to know about composing engaging shots through single images. Apart from art techniques, readers will have clarity about choosing a relevant topic and using light to depict day/night scenes.

14. Learn To Draw And Paint

The absolute beginner should know that drawing and painting are two different mediums, even though they share many similarities. And to learn about them both, order your copy of this book today since it highlights how drawing and sketching can improve your painting skills. You’ll find hands-on lessons discussing charcoal and pencil sketches by drawing lines, scales, patterns, depths, contours, and perspective exercises. Best of all are the multiple color illustrations to describe art-making.

15. How To Draw

Drawing doesn’t simply mean sketching nature or still life; in fact, model building is one of the most interesting concepts covered under drawing fundamentals. You can read this book which focuses primarily on design and the various model processes of rotations, volumes, and ellipses. We loved the images and video tutorials that made the different techniques easier to understand. 

16. Drawing The Head And Hands

This is another book by Andrew Loomis that discusses the artistic techniques of drawing different body parts. To be more precise, he talks about the skills needed for drawing heads and hands by developing your perspective through the topics covered in the book. All the methods are pretty simple, and you’ll get a clear idea of how to sketch a proportionate human being with heads and arms that don’t seem out of place.

17. Figure Drawing

Although there are several books on figure drawing, very few tackle the subject from an anatomical standpoint. Michael Hampton understood this and believed that knowing about human anatomy would help people sketch life-like figures. The book discusses the mechanical techniques of sketching a human figure, and you can also transfer these techniques to other mediums. It is divided into several sections for easy understanding and explores various skill sets for the benefit of budding artists.

18. Figure Drawing For Artists

No, we aren’t reviewing the same book twice – this is a different book by Steve Huston that explores figure drawing. You’ll learn how to add detail to artwork, thanks to the author’s instructions and advice to focus on the tiny things. It’s a comprehensive guide for intermediate and advanced artists discussing the importance of gesture, light, perspective, and structure. Most importantly, you’ll find artworks by famous artists for