The Complete Guide to Drawing for Beginners by Yoshiko Ogura

An easy-to-follow, yet comprehensive beginner's guide to drawing.

In The Complete Guide to Drawing for Beginners, experienced art instructor Yoshiko Ogura explains the basics of pencil drawing through a series of lessons that provide insights on artistic composition, simulating highlights and shadows, depicting realistic forms, rendering texture and creating a sense of depth in your artwork. At the beginning of the book, she provides you with all the information you need to get started, what materials to buy, how to prepare your work surface, pencils and erasers, and even how to sit correctly when drawing.

Once you know these, Ogura provides a series of straightforward step-by-step lessons showing you how to draw simple objects while understanding the essential concepts of perspective, how to convey hard and soft surfaces and textures, composition and balance. From here, you progress to more complex shapes and objects, including landscapes and portraits of people and animals, as she explains all the additional concepts needed to draw these realistically.

This book teaches you how to draw the following interesting subjects: simple forms, hard and soft surfaces, transparent objects, complex objects, human anatomical features, landscape elements, animals, still life, and many more.

By the end, all your drawings will begin to look impressively polished and realistic! As you work through the lessons, you'll master all the skills and knowledge that seasoned artists demonstrate in their work.

Yoshiko Ogura graduated from Musashino Art University in Tokyo. She worked for several years as an art director and character designer for Konami and Sega. Ogura went on to study at the prestigious Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in France. She has worked as a freelance illustrator and has exhibited her award-winning art in Japan, Paris, New York, New Zealand, and elsewhere. She has now returned to Japan and opened the Grace Academy of Art in Tokyo, offering drawing and painting courses, art therapy, art counseling, and art events for children.