Top 10 Books for the Beginner Artist

I thought I would do a few posts with my top books for those beginning to jump into the art world. I’m sharing the top ten books I picked for beginners from my collection. 

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1.

Daily Painting: Paint Small and Often To Become a More Creative, Productive, and Successful Artist

You can read all the books you want, take all the classes and workshops you want, and buy all the best gear, but your art will only improve if you practice regularly. This book gets you started on that path.

2.

Watercolor 1: Learn the basics of watercolor painting

Caroline Linscott covers a range of popular subjects as she introduces several basic art concepts and painting techniques, all clearly explained and illustrated.

3.

Watercolour for the Absolute Beginner: The Society for All Artists

The exercises are ideal for beginners, and the main projects will also build skills that will help artists improve. A pull-out outline drawing is provided for every exercise and main project, and Matthew Palmer shows step-by-step instructions on how to transfer these onto watercolor paper.

4.

Drawing for the Absolute Beginner: A Clear & Easy Guide to Successful Drawing

A series of fun, hands-on exercises help you practice and perfect your strokes—24 mini-demos lead to 9 full step-by-step demos. The lessons you learn by drawing simple subjects such as coffee mugs, clouds and trees will help you take on progressively more challenging matter like animals, still lifes, landscapes and portraits,

5.

Art for Kids: Drawing

The entertaining, hands-on lessons begin with contour drawing techniques and feature numerous exercises that show budding artists how to make basic shapes and forms.

6.

30-Minute Watercolor Painting for Beginners

Beautifully presented instructions and illustrations show you the fundamentals of watercolor for beginners. In five different lessons, mix colors and try various brushstrokes and washes. Learn how to choose and assemble your supplies and paint using color theory and composition techniques.

7.

Lessons for Painting Flowers: Easy Watercolors for Understanding Colors and Procedures

The eight lessons are carefully constructed to build the necessary techniques, one step at a time, by first starting with simple tasks such as creating and painting flowers with just a few petals and gradually leading up to more complex works with multiple flowers and colors.

8.

Birds, Bees & Blossoms: A Step-by-step Guide to Botanical and Animal Watercolour Painting

Botanical artist Harriet de Winton shows you how to paint modern watercolor artworks to treasure and share. This book aims to expand readers' repertoires into fauna and flora, with easy-to-follow instructions for a variety of difficulty levels.

9.

The Big Book of Realistic Drawing Secrets: Easy Techniques for drawing people, animals, flowers and nature

This book can teach anyone to draw (yes, even you!) Carrie and Rick Parks can help. As award-winning teachers, they have a proven game plan for helping artists of all levels overcome common problems and see immediate improvement in their work.

10.

Figure It Out! Human Proportions: Draw the Head and Figure Right Every Time

For those who want a bigger challenge and enjoy figure drawing, Christopher Harts shares his "foolproof" method; even beginners can quick-check the proportions of their head and figure drawings, identify errors, and swiftly fix mistakes.

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