How to Draw a Comic Book: 8 Skills for Beginners Who Draw

This guide is for authors who want to draw their own comic. Each skill below comes with the one habit that makes the biggest difference, plus a 7-day practice plan. If you’d rather hand the drawing to someone else, our comic book illustration services take a script to finished pages.

What you need to start

You can draw a whole comic with a pencil, an eraser, a ruler and a black pen. Start with the cheapest kit that lets you finish pages, and upgrade when you know what you like.

Kit	What it is	Cost
Paper	Pencil, eraser, ruler, fineliner or brush pen, and smooth bristol board or printer paper	A few dollars to start
Free digital	Krita, a free and open-source painting program for computers, with any drawing tablet	Free software; a basic tablet costs extra
Tablet apps	Procreate on iPad (paid once, no subscription) or Clip Studio Paint, whose EX edition adds multi-page comic tools	Check the current price in each app store

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

You can also mix the two: draw and ink on paper, then scan the pages to color and letter them on a computer. For more software options, see the FAQ in our guide on how to make a comic book.

Skill 1: Draw panels and gutters

Draw your panel borders first, with a ruler, before any figures. Borders tell you how much room each moment gets.

• Keep gutters even. The gutter is the blank space between panels. Pick one width and keep it on every page, so the page looks planned.
• Make the important panel bigger. The biggest panel on a page gets the most attention.
• Use a bleed panel for a big moment. Art that runs off the edge of the page feels open and dramatic. Keep text and faces inside the safe area, away from the trim.

New to these words? Our guide to graphic novel terms explains borders, tiers, bleeds and splash pages, and our free comic page templates have the safe area and bleed marked.

Skill 2: Pick the camera shot

Choose a shot for every panel, the way a film director would. Changing the shot from panel to panel keeps a page from looking flat.

Six camera shots, one character

1. 1Wide shot

   Shows where we are

2. 2Medium shot

   For talking and action

3. 3Close-up

   Shows a feeling

4. 4Extreme close-up

   One detail that matters

5. 5Bird’s-eye view

   Looking down: small or alone

6. 6Worm’s-eye view

   Looking up: big or powerful

A good default for a new scene: open with a wide shot so the reader knows where they are, move in to medium shots for the action and talking, and save close-ups for the moments that matter.

Skill 3: Draw the same character every time

Readers forgive simple drawing. They don’t forgive a character whose face changes from page to page. Make your main character easy to repeat:

1. Build from simple shapes. A circle or oval for the head, a few boxes or ovals for the body. Simple shapes are easy to draw the same way twice.
2. Pick three features you’ll never change, such as a hairstyle, one piece of clothing and one color. Readers recognize a character by these first.
3. Draw a turnaround sheet. Draw the character from the front, the side and the back, side by side at the same height, and keep it next to you while you draw pages.

Our illustrators work the same way: character sheets are drawn and approved before any page is started.

Skill 4: Faces, expressions and poses

Draw the feeling before the details. The eyes, eyebrows and mouth carry most of an expression, so practice those first: raised brows for surprise, pulled-down brows for anger, a mouth that’s open, closed or crooked.

For poses, start with a stick figure and one curved line through the spine. That line of action decides whether a pose looks calm or full of energy. Add the body shapes over it, then the details. If a pose looks stiff, try adding more curve to the line of action.

Skill 5: Simple backgrounds with one-point perspective

Draw a full background in the first panel of a scene, then simplify. Once the reader knows where they are, later panels can show part of the room, or just a color.

One-point perspective works for rooms, hallways and streets seen straight on:

1. Draw a horizon line across the panel at the height of the viewer’s eyes.
2. Put one dot on it: the vanishing point.
3. Draw the lines of the floor, walls, doors and shelves so they all point to that dot.

Lines that go straight across or straight up stay that way, parallel to the panel edges. Everything that goes into the distance meets at the dot.

Skill 6: Inking

Inking turns pencils into clean, sharp lines that print well. Two habits make the biggest difference:

• Vary the line weight. Use thicker lines for outlines, objects close to the reader and the shadow side of a shape, and thinner lines for details and things far away. A guide from Clip Studio Paint puts it this way: “Thicker lines usually represent shadows, whereas thinner lines are used for the lighter side or to de-emphasize objects in the distance.”
• Spot your blacks. Fill some areas with solid black, such as hair, a dark coat or a deep shadow. Solid black gives the page contrast and leads the eye.

Ink slowly at first. A steady line at a slower speed beats a fast, shaky one, and you can always go back and thicken a line.

Skill 7: Lettering

Place the speech balloons before you finish the art, or at least plan where they go. Words that don’t fit can cover a face or a key detail.

• Keep each balloon short. A script guide hosted on Dark Horse’s website suggests about 25 words per balloon at most.
• Put balloons in reading order, with the first speaker’s balloon at the top left.
• Point the tail at the speaker’s mouth, and keep tails short.
• Letter by hand with a ruler and guidelines, or digitally with a font made for comics. Either way, keep the letter size the same on every page.

If you’re writing the words yourself, our guide on how to write a graphic novel script covers balloon limits, captions and sound effects.

Skill 8: Lead the eye through the page

Before inking, check the reading path. In English-language comics the eye moves left to right and top to bottom, panel by panel and balloon by balloon. Look for anything that breaks that path: a balloon the reader meets too early, a tail that crosses another, or two panels that could be read in either order.

A quick test: show the page to someone without explaining it, and watch where they read first. If they stumble, move a balloon or change a panel’s size.

A 7-day practice plan

Do one drill a day, about an hour each. By day 7 you’ll have a finished one-page comic.

Day	Drill
1	Draw your main character’s turnaround: front, side and back, keeping your three features
2	Draw the same character with six expressions: happy, sad, angry, scared, surprised, bored
3	Draw one moment in all six camera shots from Skill 2
4	Draw a room in one-point perspective, then draw a close-up in the same room with almost no background
5	Plan a one-page, four-panel story and sketch it as small, rough thumbnails
6	Pencil the page full size, with the balloons placed first
7	Ink the page, letter it, and test the reading path on someone else

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

Use our free comic page templates for days 5 to 7. Then time yourself on the next page: that number tells you how long a whole comic will take.

When to get help

Drawing a few pages is a great way to learn. Drawing a whole book is a much bigger job. Thinking of going professional? See how to become a comic book artist. Comic artist Colleen Doran reports that a page takes her about 6 hours when it’s simple and about 17 when it’s complicated, for pencils and inks alone. At that pace, a 24-page comic can take several months of evenings.

If you’d rather spend that time on the story, an illustrator can draw from your script and your character ideas. For 24 pages, that’s 24 × $219 = $5,256 in full color, or 24 × $169 = $4,056 in black and white.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to draw one comic page?

It depends on the detail and your speed. Comic artist Colleen Doran reports about 6 hours for a simple page and about 17 for a complicated one, for pencils and inks, plus at least an hour of digital cleanup. Expect to be slower than that at first. Time your own first finished page, then multiply by your page count.

Should I draw comics on paper or digitally?

Either works, and you can mix them. Paper is cheap and easy to start with, and you can scan pages to color and letter them on a computer. Digital tools make undoing, resizing and lettering easier, and free software such as Krita lets you try it at no cost beyond a tablet.

What size do comic artists draw at?

On paper, artists drawing American comics commonly work on 11 × 17 inch bristol board, larger than the printed page, and the art is shrunk for print. Digitally, set your canvas to the print size with bleed, at 300 DPI for color or higher, such as 600 DPI, for black-and-white line art. Our comic book size guide lists sizes for each format.

Do I need to learn anatomy before drawing comics?

No. You can start with simple, cartoon-style characters built from basic shapes, and that style can carry a whole book. Anatomy helps as you go, especially for action poses, so study it alongside your pages. Drawing complete pages, even simple ones, builds the skills that matter most.

Related reading: How to make a comic book · Comic book ideas · Comic book publishers accepting submissions